It’s amazing what you can find with coffee and keyboard in hand. Here are our top 5 interesting “green” sites that have to do with, what else, books!

5. www.greenpressinitiative.org

Mission: How could we not include our featured organization? They work with publishers and authors to use paper that will “conserve natural resources and preserve endangered forests.”

How To: The “Participate” link makes signing up easy enough. Also of considerable interest? The vast amount of resources, including toolkits and supplier and printer lists, under the “Tools & Resources” link. Also, the stuff under the What’s New column on the home page makes for some interesting reading (including an energy saving fact sheet and news about the first green bible).

4. www.ecolibris.net

Mission: This website is all about planting trees. You balance out the amount of paper used for books you read by planting trees. Eco-Libris’ goal is to make reversing book consumer effects on forests easy and affordable. They work with major U.S. and U.K. non-profit groups to plant the trees.

How To: Go to the site and click on “Take Action”. Decide how many books you’d like to plant trees for (starts out at $5 for 5 books and works its way up to 500 books for $450) and plant away.

3. www.sustainprint.com

Mission: Environmental Sustainability in Printing and Publishing, a.k.a. SustainPrint, is a web site provided by industry publication’s Book Business and Publishing Executive. The site lays out a more journalistic approach on the latest options and issues relating to the environment and the publishing industry.

How To: While not the easiest or the prettiest site to navigate, it does provide a lot of great articles. Topics range from tips for sustainability to the latest news on big and small publishers going green. It also provides a handy list of publishers that they consider environmentally friendly.

2. www.environmentalpaper.org

Mission: This truly expansive site aims at being a singular resource for the paper and publishing industry, as well as individuals wanting to know how to make a difference. Several environmental organizations came together to make this vision of change.

How To: Go to the site and start browsing. My favorite? Under Tools and Resources, there’s a fact sheet on how to reduce waste and costs at the same time.

1. www.papercalculator.org

Mission: Using the right combination of science and economics, the Environmental Defense Fund’s Paper Calculator is all about “finding the ways that work.” It gives you information on what your paper’s impact is and ways to reduce it.

How To: Just click “Get Started” in the bottom right corner. And talk about startling. I played around with the calculator and found that for every pound of regular copy paper I use, I send out 3 pounds of CO2 and create 10 gallons of wastewater.