10 Easy Ways to Be More Sustainable with Books

I am a bibliophile. Always have been. I love reading, but I also love books in and of themselves. They are a beautiful thing. I really can't see myself reading digital books. You can't curl up with a Kindle. You can't write its margins or risk dropping it in the bathtub on one of the rare occasions you have a long afternoon bath.

But I've had to curb my book habit a bit and change it in ways. According to eco-libris "about 20 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper to be used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone." That's a lot of trees. It makes me think twice now before buying a book on the Barnes and Noble sale table just because I can. If you've got a serious book habit like me, here are ten ways to be more sustainable with it.

1. Use the library often - especially for books that you're just interested in reading once. If you have kids, take them with you and let them pick out their own books.
   
2. Buy used books. Unless the book has just been published, there are many places you can get used books easily - eBay, Amazon, Barnes and Noble's website, Alibris, and other online sites have used books.
   
3. Borrow books from your friends and lend them yours.
   
4. Have a book swap with friends - do it for both adult books and kids books. A book swap is when you give your books up but you get ones in return.
   
5. Try swaptree.com for swapping books. Swaptree is an online services that matches up the books you want to give away with the books (or DVD's or video games) you want.
   
6. Take advantage of library books sales. Many libraries purge once a year and accept donations from the public. Then they have a sale (my local library sells hardbacks for $2 and paperbacks for $1).
7. Purge your own library from time to time. If you've got books that are just sitting collecting dust that you will never read again, let someone who wants to read them have them. You can donate them to libraries before their books sales, senior citizen centers, the Good Will and other places.
8. Contact book publishers and let them know that you would like them to start using recycled paper when printing books.
9. Plant a tree for each book you read to help balance out the paper consumption your book habit causes. 
10. Read the eco-libris blog. They have a lot of good information about books and being sustainable with them.