We are students (just like you!) dedicated to help save our environment as well as relieve many students from those extra Textbook expenses, since we know how expensive Textbooks can be ourselves. Not many students are able to afford such costs in school, and prices on Textbooks are only rising. Reaching our day of graduation, while saving trees as well as money seems like a pretty good idea for all of us, especially since we always have to remember to stop and consider our future generations.

An interesting article by The Daily Green, states that only 24 Textbooks are produced for every tree felled, the article also points out ten helpful ways for us to recycle used Textbooks. A past graduate student, Tom Soder, of the Pulp and Paper Technology Program at the University of Maine, roughly calculated an average of twentyfour, 6-8 inches in diameter, forty-foot tall trees to produce a ton of printing and writing paper, while using one of the several different pulping processes (Thompson, Claudia), and Conservatree.org, a nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to preserving our environment, by educating, training as well as developing tools to make sure that paper is recycled and reused, states that “1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets”.

How many trees are cut down per each student taking up a four year college degree? Well, let's calculate this together... Assuming that an average college Textbook has about 692 pages and on average each student uses 5 Textbooks per semester, we can calculate the following:

• There are 2 semesters in a school year 2 x 5 = 10 Textbooks per year
• 10 x 692 pages = 6,920 pages per year
• 4 x 6,920 = 27,680 pages for 4 year degree

If one 6-8 inches in diameter, forty-foot tall tree is approximately 8,333 sheets of paper, then there are 27,680/8,333 = 3.3 trees that are cut down per student taking up a 4 year college degree, and this figure would be closer to 4 trees per student when taking into account paper for printed homework, projects and use of notebooks.

In 2005, The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that in the academic years of 2003 - 2004, an average student annually spent $898 on Textbooks, and that the Textbook prices have risen at twice the annual rate of inflation over the last two decades. If you take a 4 year college degree into account it sums up to be $3,592 spent, only on Textbooks for a student’s course of education. So here you go… based on an average from previous years, a college student spends 3.3 trees, and about $3,592 for their Textbooks.

Furthermore, according to National Center for Education Statistics (ies), it has been projected that 19.681 million students will be enrolled in colleges and universities from fall 2009. Assuming that this number will not change for the next 4 years, let’s calculate the total number of trees and money spent on Textbooks in the US for 4 years of education:

• Having 19,681,000 students enrolled, and multiplying this by 3.3 trees per student, means that 64,947,300 trees will be cut down in the next four years only for Textbooks.


• Each four-year college graduate spends approximately $3,592 on Textbooks throughout the course of his education so 19,681,000 students will spend a total of $70,694,152,000 on Textbooks for the next four years in school.

After reading some information regarding recycling as well as about the sate of our environment, and after considering some of these facts, understanding the consequences that come with the lack of knowledge in these matters, does it not make more sense to educate oneself about our environmental problems as well as learning ways on how to best recycle paper? Does it not seem more environmentally friendly and economically feasible for students to eXchange their Textbooks with fellow students and friends on TbookXchange? The job market does not seem to be getting any better, the news regularly point out that many of us are having difficulties finding jobs after graduation, The TbookXchange website was created and designed for our generation, as well as next student generations to come, to be able to help preserve and improve our green environment, by eXchanging Textbooks for free, which also should help reduce some of the costs associated with education, maybe allowing some students around the country to be able to reduce their school loans as well. We really hope that this website will make a difference for our environment and help many students at various universities and colleges to bring down some of their Textbook expenses. This is exactly why, we decided to develop a free Textbook eXchange website.

TbookXchange utilizes various algorithms that calculate and match the Textbooks that are in your "Need List" as well as your "Have List". Therefore, the more Textbooks you add to your “Have List” as well as your “Need List” the better the search results will be in your “Available eXchanges”. In case you have any old Textbooks that you know you will not use, go ahead and add them to your “Have List”, since someone else might need them... make note that if your Textbook does not get eXchanged this quarter, trimester or semester it might get eXchanged in any of the next ones.

If you would like to be a part of our community and you feel the same way as we do, about preserving our environment and lowering our costs for Textbooks, please join our free Textbook eXchange service, and remember that the more friends you will invite to eXchange Textbooks the better TbookXchange will work for all of us. Hopefully our Textbook eXchange website will help all of us achieve these goals, we thank you for your support.

"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it."
Winston Churchill, (1874-1965)