Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Glitter falling from the sky

On my way back from the co-op it was snowing. The snow was so fine that I couldn't see it falling in the dark (saw it all over the sidewalks though) but I could feel it hitting me and under the lights of street lamps it looked like glitter falling from the clouds, it was so pretty. (one of the only times you will ever hear me say anything nice about snow, though we are becoming less angry at eachother)

Today I shall address paper. It has become essential to our lives from writing little reminder notes to ourselves, to writing papers for work or school. We waste alot of it and destroy whole stands of trees (my father would point out that they were grown for that purpose), destroying habitat for animals and causing all sorts of environmental problems. Yes institutions have set up recycling systems and sell paper made from portions or sometimes all post consumer waste (recycled paper) which is a good thing. They say recycle and use recycled paper as much as possible. But what no one thinks about (I have only ever heard it mentioned once) is books. Do you know how much paper is used to satisfy this world's thirst for good books? (walk into a book store and think about that, its mind boggling) I don't know either but its alot. I am a book addict myself. Vacation means me sitting in a chair reading a book all day. In light of this I offer you a couple of options to continue your book digestion in a more environmentally friendly way as well as easier on the wallet. Library sales are amazing (so is borrowing from the library), go on bag day but go early (that is how I have ended up with 3 shelves of books I have not read yet. Bag day is like black friday except that you can buy as much as you can fit in a bag for an itty bitty amount of money). You can buy used books (oh no its been read already!) online and at half priced books (if you have one near you, fabulous invention, really) or www.bookmooch.com a great place to swap books with people all over the country but you have to have books you are willing to give to people.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good post. Yeah, people may stop using paper for taking notes and stuff like that, just switch to laptops instead, but there's something about the whole tactile experience of sitting down with a good book and feeling the pages between your fingers that laptops can never copy. It would be pretty damn cool if the only thing we used paper for was books...and maybe origami.

HippieAtHeart said...

That is the truth, nothing is better then holding a book in ones hand while reading (even if ebooks are an interesting idea)