Most LEED professionals crave knowledge. With this ever-changing industry, you must keep current on what’s going on with LEED and green building issues. If you’re like me, books are a main source of this information.
Each year, approximately 30 million trees are used to make books sold in the United States. Many of these trees are sourced from endangered forests with devastating impacts on the people and wildlife that rely on them.
The good news is that the book industry is rapidly implementing practices that minimize negative environmental impacts. Over 160 publishers, representing about 40% of the book industry’s market share, have either developed strong environmental policies or signed the industry-generate treatise on responsible paper use. If given the choice, buy books from these publishers vs. the non-green ones.
In addition to supporting earth-friendly publishers, another way to get your book-smarts without harming trees is by getting an e-reader like Amazon’s Kindle, B&N’s Nook, Apple’s iPad or the Sony Reader Digital Book.
The digital book reader industry is taking off and going main stream. You’ve probably seen Amazon’s Kindle commercials on TV – with their clever imagery and catchy little jingle. Commercials like these are just one indication that this tree-friendly technology is being adopted by the masses. Another indicator is the availability of these hot little devices at mainstream stores. I recently saw Kindles for sale at Target and the Nook at BestBuy – I’m sure more brick-and-mortar stores will soon follow.
Publishers are also jumping on the digital reader bandwagon at record speed. More and more books are being published in these electronic formats – many are available at the same time the print book is published (for less money!!)
Re-“Kindle-ing” My Love for Books
I bought a Kindle a few months ago and now I can’t imagine a world without it! Now instead of books literally falling off my bookshelf and having to lug heavy resource books to work in a tote bag, I have all of the books I’m reading in one compact spot. I can switch from book to book quickly and easily, depending on my mood – go from reading my Green Construction Project Management book to the latest John Sanford Prey book with a quick push of a button.
Today, the Kindle Store has more than 390,000 books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs available. All Kindle books are downloaded to your Kindle in less than 60 seconds. Plus, most of the Kindle versions are discounted – substantially in some cases.
Not ready to make the investment on the Kindle reader itself? You don’t have to actually purchase a Kindle device to get the benefit of paper-less books. Amazon makes the Kindle reader format available for your PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Blackberry and the Android.
The best part?? In addition to getting your favorite leisure books, there is a great variety of green building, engineering, architecture, project management and construction books available in the Kindle format. Having all of these valuable resources in one location when you’re on a job site or at work is priceless. (Sorry, I just sounded like a MasterCard commercial…)
There are two versions of the kindle: the standard Kindle for a new lower price of $189 and the NEW Kindle DX for $379.
In my next article I’ll share some of my green building Kindle favorites.