The Clean and Green Club

Just back from my annual trip to Book Expo America, and one of the things I noticed was a definite shift toward sustainability–not just in the books being published, but also in attention to industry practices.

Some of these were aimed at publishers and printers, and some at consumers. One of the latter–which I learned about not at BEA but in a personal note from one of the founders–is EcoLibris.com, whose slogan is “Every book you read was once a tree. Now you can plant a tree for every book you read.”

Like carbon offset programs, this attempts to let consumers make restitution for the environmental effects of their reading habits. Starting at a dollar per tree and going down slightly with quantity purchases, the group funds reforestation projects in developing countries. It’s a for-profit business, and does retain a percentage of the donations. But it also includes all sorts of interesting environmental information on the site.

One of the pages I like best is the Collaborations page, which lists joint efforts with publishers, authors, bookstores, etc.–who are of course encouraged to spread the word and who receive customer kudos for being Green.

And while I think offset programs are only a temporary solution to reduction of pollution, greenhouse gases, etc., when I think of that convention center filled with literally millions of books and imagine a forest sprouting up with a tree for each book, it’s a vision that has a lot of appeal.

Read Shel Horowitz’s award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, for more on Green and ethical companies succeeding.