“Making this change was simply a matter of asking a question,” said Danielle Meirow, who is on the Senate Diversity Affairs Committee.

Glaab said the senate’s efforts and many questions from students caused the store to switch to just the recycled material. Student Senate was one of the organizations that asked the bookstore to make the switch. This is not one of those cases, so we can sell the recycled product at the same price as the non-recycled.”

“A lot of times, environmentally friendly school supplies and other products cost exponentially higher. “It only costs us a penny more per book, so we actually retail them at the same price for students,” he said. Glaab added that unlike many other “green” products, this doesn’t cost the students more than buying a blue book. “In fact, I think it’s a little more confusing for students.” “There’s no real advantage to stocking both,” Glaab said. The difference between green and blue books is that the green books contain a minimum of 30 percent post-consumer waste content such as old magazines, newspapers and office paper, but blue books have no recycled content. “So when students come in and they don’t see a blue book, a lot don’t buy the green book because they don’t want to have the wrong thing when they take a test.”

“The reason we haven’t stocked just the recycled product in years past is because so many faculty refer to them as blue books,” said Tony Glaab, associate manager at the University Bookstore. This change will take place starting the fall 2013 semester, but the store will be selling blue books until they run out. In an effort to be more sustainable, the Grand Valley State University Bookstore is making the switch to supply only green books-instead of both green and blue books-to the student body.

Blue greenbooks