Book industry is turning green but huge publisher Hachette bucks the trend

Posted by jamie — 11 December 2006 at 9:00am - Comments

Many bestsellers are now printed on forest friendly paper

We haven't made a lot of fuss about the Book Campaign for a while, but it's been slowly simmering in the background and the results have been pretty impressive. Publishers have been keen to adopt forest friendly policies so they use more recycled paper and paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and to date over 40 per cent of UK publishers are on the road to going green.

Big names such as Random House, Bloomsbury, Penguin, HarperCollins, and Egmont are all on board and browsing through the shelves you'll see a growing number of bestsellers printed on well-sourced paper.

From Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, to Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother, via Margaret Atwood, Bernard Cornwell, and Tristram Stewart plus children's authors Alice Hoffman and Michael Morpurgo - their latest books have all been published without contributing to ancient forest destruction.

But of course, not everyone is reading from the same page. Hachette is the largest publisher in the UK and with imprints like Hodder Headline, Octopus, Little Brown and Orion in its portfolio, it commands nearly one fifth of all book sales in this country. Imagine what an impact it would have if Hachette were to go green but sadly they don't seem keen to meet us to talk about it.

We haven't given up yet though and authors can help too. We have plenty of information on how you can persuade your publisher to become forest friendly - it might not be as difficult as you think.

About Jamie

I'm a forests campaigner working mainly on Indonesia. My personal mumblings can be found @shrinkydinky.

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