Feature story - July 7, 2005
LONDON, United Kingdom — Random House, the biggest general publishing house in the UK, has publicly committed to making its book production "ancient forest friendly". This is a major step in helping to ensure the survival of the world's last ancient forests, and encouraging other publishers to do the same.
Stephen Fry adds his signature in support of the Book Campaign.
We've been working with Random House as part of the Greenpeace
Book Campaign, which encourages publishers to stop sourcing paper
from ancient forests and instead commit to ancient forest friendly
solutions. Random House will now be working with its suppliers to
move towards Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and
recycled paper for its books.
Our Greenpeace UK Book Campaigner, Belinda Fletcher, says that
this is not just lip service from Random House. "This commitment
is the most comprehensive commitment developed by a UK publisher to
date and sets a good example for other publishing houses to
follow," she said.
The announcement is also great news for Random House authors.
Some of the big names supporting our campaign include Ben Elton,
Stephen Fry, Terry Pratchett and Phillip Pullman. Children's
authors Anne Fine and John O'Farrell, who have also been supporting
the Greenpeace campaign, were delighted with the news.
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Anne said, "I am really delighted that Random House have made
this commitment. I very much hope my next book will now be printed
on ancient forest friendly paper, which will help preserve the
world's last ancient forests for the children of the future."
John O'Farrell went that one step further, adding, "I will now
do my bit for the environment by recycling all my jokes."
Random House UK is following in the footsteps of its Canadian
counterpart, who along with 70 other publishing houses have made
formal commitments to phase out ancient forest fibre from their
books. As a result six million Canadian books have been printed on
ancient forest friendly paper, including JK Rowling's "Harry Potter
and the Order of the Phoenix".
Help us convince more publishers to go forest friendly!
Our cyberactivsts have convinced some publishers to go ancient forest friendly - join up now!
Help us save ancient forests
Donate now to help our ongoing campaign for ancient forest friendly publishing