Once a week, I am offering up a tip or action or idea that we can all engage with to help reduce waste, use less materials and energy, help conserve species or habitats, and/or generally work towards living in ways that allow for more health and wellbeing for all aspects of the planet.
So, this week the green thought is about books. I LOVE books! I read a lot. My wife reads a lot. our daughter reads a lot. Our house has a lot of books. But printing new books means cutting down trees, using water, and burning fossil fuels to make paper and bind books. Overall, producing one new book can result in around 6 pounds of CO2 gas being released into the atmosphere which means that books have a rather high environmental cost.
Two solutions are to buy used books and to utilize libraries. Buying a used book means less production of new paper. This means less tree cutting, lower water use, and less energy consumption. All good things. Buying used books is a much more environmentally sensitive choice when compared to buying a new book, but it still means purchasing a book that will go into your personal collection and does still contribute to climate change. Getting a book from a library reduces all the associated costs even more since one library book can be read by a very large number of people, and library collections can help reduce the need for large private collections. Plus, by visiting a library and checking out books, you are helping to show that libraries are valuable resources and should continue to receive public support and funding.
Thank you for visiting my blog! Please check back in next week for another Green Thought Thursday!
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