By Sharon Glassman

Many “green” books are now printed with The Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator featured in the book’s inside front cover.

The calculator helps publishers—and, ultimately, book buyers—“quantify the benefits of better paper choices.” The Paper Calculator shows the environmental impacts of different papers across their full lifecycle. By using less paper, increasing recycled content, and making other improvements, you can save wood, water and energy, and cut pollution and solid waste.

For example, in one book I consulted, I learned that thirteen trees were saved in the printing of  just one 140-page paperback’s print run by using sustainable papers. That’s a really cool statistic to learn and adds a little bit of value to your ecologically friendly book purchase.

USE: The online version of the Paper Calculator