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Environmental incentives for buying used textbooks

Jan. 30, 2009

By Sean Doerre
Reporter

Every student has experienced the nightmare: purchase a new textbook at the beginning of the semester for $150, only to sell it back five months later for $30. Sometimes new editions of books come out and the old ones are thrown out. The founders of Chegg.com, however, a textbook rental service, have found a way to give back to the environment in an industry where it would be easy to waste a lot of paper.

While claiming to save students money Chegg.com also appeals to environmentally-minded students. The site contains many textbooks that have been used, which cuts down on the amount of new textbooks produced.

Adding to the company's green initiative, Chegg.com has recently partnered with American Forests and Global Releaf Project, groups that work to protect and restore trees and forests, for an initiative to plant one tree for every student's textbook rental.

"Planting a tree for every book a student rents, buys or sells is our way to give back to the environment long after students have finished their schooling," said Aayush Phumbhra, co-founder of Chegg.com.

The program funded the planting of over 750 acres of trees in 2008, while saving students over $16 million, Phumbhra said.

More than 30 million trees are cut down annually to produce the books sold in the U.S., according to a report prepared by the Green Press Initiative. The report also found that only five to 10 percent of the paper used by U.S. book publishers is recycled.

American Forests started the Global ReLeaf campaign in 1990 and has been planting native trees in rural and urban areas across the United States and around the world, according to the non-profit group's Web Site. The campaign plants trees along hillsides to reduce erosion and streams to prevent polluted runoff and sedimentation as well as other ecologically significant areas,

"Anything like this that has a truly green edge is really cool," said Carl Flynn, University Sustainability Committee chair of education and communication. "Anytime you get the best of both worlds, it helps the environment: you are recycling textbooks so you are not requiring the publishers to print another book and they are planting trees."

Chegg.com aims to be easy on the environment as well as students' wallets.

"Chegg.com offers students a great way to get all the materials they need for their education at a significant savings," Phumbhra said.

The service offers students a revolutionary way to get textbooks. Instead of buying new or used, Chegg.com offers the option to rent textbooks for a semester.

Osman Rashid and Phumbhra launched Chegg at Iowa State University in 2003 as a "hyper-local" classifieds directory and then expanded the business to its current function in the fall of 2007. At first the service was known as Textbookflix.com, but in 2007 it officially changed its name to Chegg, a combination of the words chicken and egg.

The service has grown to reach students on over 1,000 campuses, according to the company's Web site.

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