Guilt-Free Reading Edit
Eco-Libris Plants Trees to Offset Book Paper

If your reading habits are more 20th than 21st century, you haven’t made the switch to Kindle and can’t quite give up your print addiction, there is a way you can feel a little less guilty about the trees that go into making your newspapers, books and magazines.

Eco-Libris is a business that plants trees to offset the trees used to create books. You choose how many books you’d like to offset, pay about a buck each, and soon, trees will be planted in developing countries to compensate for the trees cut down and made into paper for your books.

The planting and conservation provide jobs, improve the environment and help create a sustainable, tree-lined future. Eco-Libris also sends a sticker that you can place on your book to show that you’ve contributed to restoring trees to the ecosystem. You can purchase Eco-Libris stickers as gifts for your book-reading friends as well.

Each year, more than 4.16 billion books are produced in the U.S.; of these, only 13% are printed using recycled paper. While more and more book publishers are signing onto green practices, there is quite a distance to go before publishing is a truly green industry.

The YouTube video above is a slide show about Eco-Libris. The captions are in French, but even if you don’t read French, you’ll get the idea. In addition, you can see the site’s plantings gallery online.