Ancient Forest Friendly Book Campaign

In the past few years, a hopeful model of wood reduction has emerged through a collaboration between Canadian forest activists and book publishers. Recognizing that over 80 percent of the world’s old-growth forests have been logged, and that remaining ecosystems in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia are now under intensive industrial harvesting, the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Canadian Markets Initiative has succeeded in enlisting 25 publishing houses including Random House, Knopf, and Penguin to sign 3-year commitments to phase out papers containing fibers from ancient and endangered forests. The publishers have also agreed to switch to processed chlorine-free (PCF) pulping (meaning that the recycled content has been pulped without chlorine chemicals), and to reduce office paper consumption within their own operations.

Given market realities and long-standing resistance to change within the publishing industry, there were plenty of reasons to assume such an ambitious project would fail. Publishing is a highly competitive industry with slim margins. An incremental rise in paper costs would directly increase the cost of the product. In addition, when the “Good Between the Covers” campaign started, high recycled content papers suitable for the book trade were not readily available.

With lofty goals and a refusal to be defeated, campaign director Nicole Rycroft began talking with suppliers and production departments looking for ways to forge innovative partnerships. San Francisco-based New Leaf Paper eventually stepped up to the challenge by filling the niche with high post-consumer content, cost-competitive, book grades such as Eco-Book and Good News Offset. Popular myth tells it that, when she was informed about the campaign, Canadian laureate Alice Munroe halted the presses so that her novel Loveship, Friendship, Courtship, Marriage would be printed on “ancient forest friendly” paper. That set the ball rolling. In less than a year and a half, nearly every major publisher in the country had joined the campaign.

“Between July of 2001 and December 2002,” Rycroft reports, “more than 2 million books have been printed on recycled paper, containing between 40 and 100 percent post-consumer contents materials.” All Canadian printings of Harry Potter, including the 2003 release Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix have been printed on ancient forest friendly processed chlorine free paper. South of the border, university presses in the United States are working to formalize a similar initative. An ancient forest friendly packaging campaign is overdue.

Information on the campaign can be found at
Canadian Market Intitiative.

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