CNET News: “[Better World Books] Eco-Alternative to Amazon…”

Posted by admin on 01.10.2008 at 9:46 am

The now oft-photographed co-founder Xavier, caught
in his 5 minutes of sitting down time, on “the throne”

If you happen to be perusing CNET’s News Blog today (or if you like following the myriad links that we post), you’ll see a reference to a company you may recognize.  Hailed as “Eco-Alternative to Amazon funds literacy programs” Better World Books gets a pat on the back for all the hard work we do (which isn’t why we do it, but it feels good sometimes).

The article begins with a story you may have heard before:

F. Xavier Helgesen had big dreams to build Web sites after graduating from Notre Dame in 2001 with an MIS degree, but then the dot-com industry crashed.

Instead he co-founded a company in 2002 that sells books otherwise destined for the landfill, sends some of the proceeds to literacy groups, and uses carbon-neutral shipping…

and goes on with the good news of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, including our free shipping in the US, our flat rate $2.97 for international orders and how we use not just no-value books but use discarded, once landfill bound library shelving to store the books (680,000 lbs of library shelving, in fact).

Check out the full article.

| Tagged Uncategorized, betterworld.com, CNET, press, Xavier Helgesen