Marc Allen

The book-publishing industry faces a new challenge: to improve its ecological footprint—significantly. The call was brought upon the industry by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Green Press Initiative—a nonprofit group that promotes environmentally responsible practices in the publishing industry—and was announced at the recent Book Expo America in Chicago. Currently, the industry uses less than 5 percent recycled paper. That's 5 percent of an average of nearly one million tons of paper consumed each year by the book-publishing industry alone. The industry's consumption of non-recycled paper produces 5.2 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of 19 million trees

Committing to recycled paper is not an easy decision for a publisher. Here at New World Library, a 25-year-old publishing company known for books by personal growth pioneers Shakti Gawain (Creative Visualization), Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), and Deepak Chopra (Seven Spiritual Laws of Success), it's been an incremental process. But each step forward has resulted in a more Earth-friendly product. Committing to use recycled paper was the first step. We became a member of the Green Press Initiative (GPI), a non-profit environmental advocacy group, to take advantage of their information, contacts, and planning assistance for converting to recycled and environmentally friendly publishing. GPI's planning