There are plenty of organizations out there willing to help you balance your carbon output, but Eco-Libris has found a very special niche.  This company has focused on balancing the paper used to print books.

Publishers have struggled to make their industry greener. Eco-Libris works to plant trees to counteract the effects of timber felled for the production of books, working with everyone involved in the lifecycle of a book from the printer to the reader.

Readers, for instance, can choose how many books they want to balance. If you wanted to balance ten of the books sitting on your bookshelf, you could do so for $10. In exchange for that money, Eco-Libris would work with its planting partners — Sustainable Harvest International, RIPPLE Africa and the Alliance for International Reforestation — to plant an appropriate number of trees in a developing country. You would also receive a sticker to mark your books as ‘balanced.’

Eco-Libris also works with a number of presses on several different initiatives. Bookhouse Publishing, for instance, balanced the entire run of the Swedish edition of Muhammad Yunus’ Creating a World Without Poverty. Kedzie Press is taking a different tactic, partnering with Eco-Libris in the Million Tree-A-Thon, which plancs to plant one million trees (and balance one million books) by the end of 2009. Kedzie Press also plants one tree for each book the sell and has added the Eco-Libris logo to their books. Eco-Libris is working with other publishing houses as well, including Raincoast Books, Barefoot Books and Process Press.

Book stores can also offset their books through Eco-Libris. An extensive list of bookstores is available on the Eco-Libris website. Through their wide variety of programs, Eco-Libris has planted more than 61,500 trees, and that number continues to rise.

According to Eco-Libris, the carbon footprint of the average book is 8.85 pounds. Last year, well over 4 billion books were printed. The publishing industry’s carbon footprint is nothing to sneeze at — estimates put it somewhere around 12.4 million tons. Dealing with that large of a number has been problematic. Most publishers have made commitments to using more recycled paper, but there are only so many options when it comes to that approach, and many small presses simply don’t have the option of doing so. Eco-Libris’ approach may make for a more feasible response — and perhaps a more focused plan among the variety of carbon credit programs.

Image courtesy Eco-Libris