Green Case Study: Lifewater Coffee Table Book

Lifewater International believes in serving the vulnerable in word and deed. That’s why, alongside their water access, sanitation, and hygiene work, they partner with local ministries serving all people regardless of religion, listening first, and walking alongside community members as neighbors.

Lifewater knows that seeing an end to the global water and sanitation crisis can only happen through collective action. The non-profit, water development organization sought out to show how a movement of engaged people can bring real change in places of development. To help communicate this, Lifewater reached out to Rule29 to create a Lifewater book. The purpose of the book was to thank donors and sponsors around the world, and show how their involvement helped serve people and lead to better outcomes.

The book included photographs taken of various locations around the world in which Lifewater has been actively dedicated to aiding. The book reveals the difficult conditions and reality of places of need, but also of the progress and potential for hope through joining together in a combined effort against lack of water sanitation and scarcity. The design of the book features a crisp, clean layout accentuated with handwritten elements for a personal feel. Our production of this book was to honor that work by doing what was below:

Reducing Our Carbon Footprint
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1,462 lbs CO₂ greenhouse gases prevented by using green energy.

Many commercial print applications – book publishing, newspaper and magazine production, paper-based marketing material and numerous others – are characterized by high levels of over-production and waste. Paper has significant embedded Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions resulting from other phases of paper’s life cycle. For our projects, we try to limit things like carbon emissions by choosing papers and other materials that are eco friendly.

Post-Consumer Recycled
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1 ton of wood saved by using green energy and Appleton Coated U1X 20% PCR paper. That’s 41.4 trees!

Remember “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”? Well, Post-Consumer Content is the piece of Reuse that we emphasize. This is essentially the act of reusing content that has already be used and discarded by consumers – and the papers that we choose tend to have high percentages of Post-Consumer Content so that we can always be saving trees.

Driving = Not So Great
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481 miles not driven by using green energy.

To reduce our footprint, even more, we try to utilize resources and vendors that are close in distance to the final destination. In this case, it meant using a printer nearby to Lifewater and papers/materials easily sourced.