The Book Campaign heads to Hay-on-Wye Festival

Posted by admin — 31 May 2005 at 8:00am - Comments

Tony Benn adds his signature in support of the Book Campaign

A team of staff and volunteers were busy working away at this year's Hay on Wye Book Festival - promoting the Greenpeace Book Campaign to the tens of thousands of authors, publishers and members of the general public who descend on Hay once a year for a feast of literary talks, films and workshops.

A total of 55 authors signed our special pledge book - a giant Victorian scrapbook - to show their support for the campaign. Signatories include Children's Laureate Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman (seen reaffirming his commitment on our front page) , Audrey Niffenegger, Jon Snow, Julian Clary, Meg Rosoff, Monty and Sarah Don and 'horse whisperer' Monty Roberts. To see pics of some of the authors, click here.

Hundreds of people visited the Greenpeace stall to find out more about the campaign, or just to sit on the zany multicoloured 'hand' chairs that were the distinctive feature of the stand (one of which was last seen in the Big Brother house of a recent Dr. Who episode).

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Everyone can see that shifting the UK publishing industry over to using ancient forest friendly paper - that's paper that maximises recycled content with any virgin fibre coming from Forest Stewardship Council certified sources, which guarantees forests are managed in an environmentally and socially responsible way - simply makes sense.

Aside from that Greenpeace held a succesful lecture on the first weekend. Chaired by Greenpeace Director Stephen Tindale it featured government chief scientist David King and head of Shell UK Ron Oxburgh talking to a packed auditorium about the threat posed by climate change.

Once again, the organizers put on a great festival, and thanks go out to all who helped us become a part of this year's happenings, with special thanks to festival director Peter Florence.

About Earth Lady

Coordinator of the North Kent group and a Garden Design student

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