Swaptree.com recycles media, saves money, plants trees

Wall Street traders gave us the global economic meltdown. Oil futures traders gave us $4.00 a gallon gasoline. This Earth Day, Swaptree traders will be helping to reforest the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, one of the world’s most endangered regions. Which kind of trader would you rather be?

If you’d like to do your part to help the Earth, visit Swaptree.com on Earth Day, April 22, and start swapping books, DVDs, CDs, and video games, for free. With each completed trade, Swaptree will contribute $1.00 to Plant a Billion Trees, a conservation initiative created by The Nature Conservancy. Every dollar helps The Nature Conservancy and its partners plant one tree in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.

“This is our latest ‘re-commerce’ initiative to encourage people to reuse, recycle, and help the environment,” says Greg Boesel, co-founder of Swaptree.com. “Swaptree is all about conservation. And Earth Day is all about promoting a healthy, sustainable environment. Our missions are intertwined. With thousands of trades happening every day on Swaptree.com, we believe we can easily reach our goal of funding the planting of 10,000 trees in one day, helping to protect our most vital natural resource, our forests.”

In recent studies by the Green Press Initiative and The Green Initiative, it was estimated that every book contributes 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, while every CD or DVD contributes 2.2 pounds. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection Agency has reported that 100,000 pounds of CDs and DVDs (and the chemicals they contain like petroleum, aluminum, etc.) are deposited in U.S. landfills every month, and the U.S. book industry, according to a recent environmental trends study, chops down an excess of 25 million trees yearly.

Swaptree is a Web site that allows users to trade books, CDs, DVDs, and video games with other users for free. Swaptree trades are cost-effective and friendly to the environment, because consumers don’t have to buy new books, movies, music, and video games at top dollar. Trading on Swaptree also reduces landfill growth, because consumers throw away fewer goods. When a Swaptree user finishes a book, they don’t trash it … they trade it for their next book, CD, DVD, or video game. This process is entirely free of charge, other than shipping, for which postage labels can be purchased and printed directly from the Swaptree website.