Book Campaign

I get a lot of book tokens for Christmas, birthdays and the like - I read a lot so it's an easy option for a hard-to-buy-for kind of guy. But they have a habit of lurking in my wallet for months at a time, as I've got into the habit of buying second hand books. Buy books cheaply from charity shops and return them when I'm done - it's the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) all rolled into one, with a dose of charitable intentions thrown in for good measure.

The only flaw in my cunning plan is that pre-loved books don't just spontaneously appear in branches of Oxfam, they begin life as a tree in a forest somewhere. Large amounts of fresh virgin paper are required to keep the publishing industry running, and if the production of that paper is causing the destruction of large and ancient forests, those book tokens are going to remain where they are indefinitely.

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.

We're celebrating more good news for our Book Campaign, as leading childrens' publisher Egmont Press has announced plans to publish its first novel on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper.

Random House, one of the biggest publishing houses in the UK has gone public with a commitment towards 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.