Feature story - 5 July, 2005
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 BookCampaign, which encourages publishers to stop sourcing paper fromancient forests and instead commit to ancient forest friendlysolutions. Random House will now be working with its suppliers to movetowards Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC®) certified and recycled paperfor its books.
Our Greenpeace UK Book Campaigner, Belinda Fletcher, says that this is a big commitment from Random House. "This is themost comprehensive commitment developed by a UK publisher to date andsets 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, TerryPratchett and Phillip Pullman. Children's authorsAnne Fine and John O'Farrell, who have also been supporting theGreenpeace campaign, were delighted with the news.
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Anne said, "I am really delighted that Random House have made thiscommitment. I very much hope my next book will now be printed onancient forest friendly paper, which will help preserve the world'slast 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 Canadiancounterpart, who along with 70 other publishing houses have made formalcommitments to phase out ancient forest fibre from their books. As a result six million Canadian books have been printed on ancientforest friendly paper, including JK Rowling's "Harry Potter and theOrder of the Phoenix".
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