If you’ve managed to get your home fairly green but leave it everyday for an emissions-producing commute and an office place that doesn’t contain so much as a recycling bin, there’s definitely room for some improvement of your overall carbon footprint. These days most of us spend as much time (if not more) at the office as at home and it’s a place rife with elements that can be made more eco-friendly.

Greening Your Office by Jon Clift and Amanda Cuthbert is a handy guide that will help you (and your office mates) get greener with your day-to-day operations—and, in many cases, save some cash at the same time. You’ll see the most results if you own your own business or work from home and can implement some of the more major changes presented in Greening Your Office, but even a part-time employee can have a positive effect on their workplace using this resource and its helpful ideas on things like commuting techniques and reusing materials. Click here to read more

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When it comes to being eco-friendly, books don’t really make the grade. All that paper depletes our forests and rarely are books made from recycled paper and books are a heavy item to ship as well. But luckily there are eco-friendly solutions that are no-brainers.

Visit the library: So very retro, right? The library always has been and hopefully always will be an eco-friendly and budget-friendly way to read. If you don’t have a library card yet or haven’t been to the library in ages, do it now. September is the American Library Association’s Library Card Sign-Up month.

Swap online: Booksfree.com is like the Netflix of the book world. For $11 a month, you can borrow two paperbacks and keep a running wish list. Shipping to and from your home is included in your membership fee, and since they are paperbacks the carbon cost will be lower. Sites like this are a good book-sharing option if you can’t deal with library due dates. The site has over 200,000 titles ranging from the classics to the newest titles.

Get a Kindle: While the eco factor of electronic books has been long debated, a recent analysis by the Cleantech Group says that over the lifecycle of a Kindle, the carbon emissions are still less than reading traditional books. But if you don’t buy very many books each year, it’ll take much longer for the benefit to even out. The study showed that the breaking point was 22.5 books.

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Dear book worms, are you having trouble reconciling your love of the written word and your good environmental conscience? Still, the first answer you’d give to the question “what would you take with you on a desert island?” is “a book”? You might have already been driven to switch to recycled paper books and/or are part of a local book club. You might also be the proud owner of an e-book. Giving up the familiar book created from dead trees for a device similar to a PDA with no keyboard sounds quite tempting. The two most popular are the Amazon Kindle 2 and the Sony Reader. Click here to read more

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Daily Greenz #127

Ever wish you had a green bible to answer all your green life questions?  Leo Hickman’s newly revised and updated A Good Life aims to give you a little peace of mind by tackling a wide spectrum of questions, ranging from the small (what are my household cleaners doing to my family’s health?) to the big (is it ever acceptable to fly?).  His guide to ethical living attempts to connect the dots between our habits and lifestyles to the impact they have on the environment and offers practical solutions to improving the quality of our lives.  His sidebar layout makes the book an easy read, containing such hard-hitting facts as “driving a 13 MPG SUV instead of the average 22 MPG car for one year wastes more energy than if you left the fridge door open for six years.”  The book’s comprehensive directory is also an attractive feature for the would-be ecoist seeking guidance on specific topics.  Thoughtfully written, A Good Life is a must-read for amateurs and veterans alike.  Available for $17.79 at www.amazon.com.

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Daily Greenz #98

    As an eco-friendly bookworm, you try to off-set your need to read by borrowing from your local library or buying from used bookstores like www.strandbooks.com.  But considering that publishers cut down 20 million trees each year to produce new books, you want to do more.  With the recent partnership of Eco-Libris and BookMooch, you now can.

The two services have joined their philosophies to allow a free exchange of used books (BookMooch) with planting a tree for every dollar donated to the cause (Eco-Libris).  In this case, members can earn a BookMooch point for every $10 they donate to Eco-Libris, allowing them to mooch a book online for free.  Since Eco-Libris’s philosophy is to plant one tree for every book you read since every book you read was once a tree, each dollar you give to the cause is really just another way to ensure that books will last forever.  What bookworm can resist such an eco-friendly guarantee?  So start reading and planting at www.ecolibris.net and www.bookmooch.com.

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