The Eco-Audits
Every copy of Ida B and True (…Sort Of) so far have been printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. That means no trees were cut down to make those books, (Emmaline and the Bunny was printed on paper with 40% post-consumer recycled content, because of the illustrations). We have saved over 3,000 trees from getting cut down by printing that way, and that makes me extremely happy.
And that’s not all. There are many advantages to the environment (and humans) by printing this way, as you can see in the eco-audits below. Each of the books has an eco-audit located at the front or back of the book, and they are filled with all sorts of information (a science unit could be created around this stuff).
My thanks to HarperCollins Children’s Books and Greenwillow Books for choosing to print the books this way (because this sort of paper is more expensive than the cut-down-trees variety) and to everyone at Green Press Initiative and the Environmental Defense Fund who educated us about the best choices for paper, and helped us make the calculations cited here.
We care about the health of this planet and all of its inhabitants. So all hardcover and paperback editions of this book were printed on 100% postconsumer recylcled paper (that means that no trees were cut down to create the paper). And that paper was processed chlorine-free, because when chlorine is used to bleach paper, the process creates toxic byproducts called dioxins and furans that can make people and animals sick.
As a result of these choices, to date all printings of Ida B have also saved:
2,671 trees
(282 tons of wood)
503,358 pounds of solid waste
2.0 trillion BTUs of energy
(equivalent to one year of electricity required by 22 average U.S. homes)
631,138 pounds of greenhouse gases
(equivalent to the annual emissions of 57 automobiles)
Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator. For more information, visit www.papercalculator.org.
Ida B eco-audit
We care about the health of this planet and all of its inhabitants. So the first hardcover printing of this book used 100% postconsumer recycled paper (that means that no trees were cut down to create the paper). And that paper was processed chlorine-free, because when chlorine is used to bleach paper, the process creates toxic byproducts called dioxins and furans that can make people and animals sick. As a result of these choices, the first printing of True also saved:
517 trees (74 tons of wood)
97,432 gallons of water
36,084 pounds of solid waste
341 million BTUs of energy
(equivalent to one year of electricity required by 4 average U.S. homes)
122,207 pounds of greenhouse gases
(equivalent to the annual emissions of 11 automobiles)
Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator. For more information, visit www.papercalculator.org.
True (...Sort Of) eco-audit
Useful web sites: