One Chinese author is trying to attack the country’s environmental problems in an innovative way: stop printing books. As Danwei’s Joel Martinsen writes, Zhou Dedong is trading in his pen for a keyboard. In the future all of his new works will only be officially sanctioned through the popular Chinese website Sina.

It’s difficult to tell if the real goal is to reduce waste, or the big money that Sina presumably [threw] at him was the real motivation. Either way, it is an unusual move. My question is how big the environmental really is. How many trees does 100,000 copies of a book require? Perhaps the symbolism of it is more important than the direct impact. Having a high profile author make this statement hopefully raises the awareness of the Chinese population in general.