4 Reasons Wise Ink Cares About Trees
Here at Wise Ink, we take a holistic approach to publishing. That means we care deeply about every aspect of the book making process, from the authors who envision them to the community of engaged readers that fuels them. But one publishing aspect that often gets overlooked is the
book itself—not the design and the words inside, but the pages and the cover that contain them. The material for these largely comes from (you guessed it) trees! That’s why Wise Ink has partnered with Neighborhood Forest and the Arbor Day Fund to help offset our environmental footprint and fight climate change by replanting nearly 4,000 trees in the last year in our local neighborhoods and our nation’s most endangered forests.
It’s been been a bad year for trees in general. Wildfires and hurricanes have devastated swaths of forested land domestically and worldwide. This isn’t just bad for books, it’s bad for everyone. Trees are environmental superheroes. Here’s why we’re making sure there’s more of them:
1. Trees Filter Our Air
Forests filter CO2 emissions out of our air by separating and storing away the carbon while releasing the oxygen back into our atmosphere. According to the Arbor Day Fund, a mature tree will absorb over 48 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere. That may not seem like much, but an acre of trees can offset the emissions of a car driven 26,000 miles. Talk about power in numbers!
2. Trees Give Us Clean Water
Forests are a cheap means of protecting the watersheds that provide us with clean drinking water. By filtering rainwater through the soil and shoring up riverbanks, trees help protect and preserve the water that flows out of our taps every day and reduce the need for expensive filtration plants . . . and according to the New York Department of Environmental Protection, it’s tastier!
3. Trees Save Energy
Trees placed strategically in our neighborhoods can cool our houses and save energy. According to the U.S. Forest Service, tree shade can reduce the energy needed to air condition a home by up to 56%. Trees also block the wind, keeping us warm and saving money on our heating bills through the winter months.
4. Trees Make Books
According to a study by the Green Press Initiative, the book industry produces a carbon footprint of 12.4 metric tons of carbon per year. The largest contributor to this footprint? The loss of carbon storage through trees. Bookmaking is by no means the largest contributor to CO2 emissions, but in the fight against climate change every reduction—big and small—matters.
Wise Ink still has a way to go before we are completely carbon neutral. But by contributing to the replanting of 4,000 trees, combined with the energy use saved by strategic tree replanting in our neighborhoods, we at Wise Ink are proud to have helped offset over 180,000 pounds of
CO2 . . . the equivalent of 20,000 books!
Obviously, books aren’t bad. As any reader knows, books play an important role in informing and inspiring us. Some have inspired nationwide movements in the fight against climate change. By producing books that push genres in new directions and seek to make a difference in the world, we at Wise Ink want to do our part to fuel positive change in the world.