Photo credit:
nkzs, stock.xchng
Momma always encouraged your reading habit, but is being a bookworm really an eco-friendly pastime? We think it can be.
Check out the library. The greenest reading option of all is your friendly neighborhood public library. If you haven't been in years, you owe it to yourself to do more than merely check in and check out. Interlibrary loan, online or telephone reservations and holds plus online reminder services like Library Elf will change your whole experience.
Stay in circulation. Keep books you already own off the shelf and in use with a book swap or trading group. Among our favorites:
Buy used. If you simply must purchase books, go used. Buy (and don't forget to sell back when you're done) locally at used bookshops such as Half-Price Books. Buy used on Amazon.com and get free shipping with your Facebook friends.
Replenish the environment. Eco-Libris plants a tree for every book you read.
Wait a sec—what about e-readers? Most bookworms protest that they love the smell, feel and overall experience of the printed page—but could an e-reader (like the new Kindle 2) be the green reading solution you're looking for? The answer is unclear. Books require tons of paper and generate a significant carbon footprint during their manufacture and shipping between printers, bookstores and readers, but e-readers may not be much of an improvement, considering resources used during their manufacture, materials used, ongoing power used and their ability (or inability) to be recycled. E-readers just haven't been around long enough to tell.
How to foster green biodiversity
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I haven't bought a book in years and we hit up the library at least once if not thrice a week. Hard to compare the half million books on the shelf and the 98 other branches in the system to anything I'll ever be able to get through.
That library elf looks neat... might not be much better than the terrible system our library uses but we'll see.
I've used ELF myself. Great reminder system, since I'm always in my e-mail!