Conscious Choice Seattle: Chain-Saw Reaction

October 2005 | Cover Story

Chain-Saw Reaction

The new Harry Potter book sold millions of U.S. copies—and felled thousands of trees. How the green publishing movement can work its own magic to save our forests

By Ritzy Ryciak

“I have always felt a kinship with trees. It is a torture to know that they have died for my words to live.”
–Novelist Alice Walker

The books on our shelves offer insight into our passions and pastimes. They reflect the people and places we bring into our imaginations.

And if a fast-evolving green publishing movement succeeds, our books will also offer a way to speak for the trees and vote for our personal values in the marketplace.

“I like the way forests smell,” says 8-year-old Katriona Guthrie-Honea of Seattle when asked why saving trees is important. “I like the way they feel. I like knowing that there are millions of living things around.”

This summer, Katriona cancelled her order of the latest Harry Potter volume, published by Scholastic in the United States, and instead ordered her book from Canadian publisher Raincoast Books. The Raincoast edition is printed on ancient-forest free and 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper, (actually used by consumers, not, say, discarded as trim waste at the manufacturer and then recycled into new paper).

Katriona is part of a growing and international movement in the publishing industry. Unfortunately, the accent is on the international and not the national. American publishers are decidedly behind the curve—and still printing almost every bestseller on virgin paper. There’s lots of chainsaws in those hardbacks.

There is not lots of silence in the forests. Noted bestselling authors like Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro have joined with environmental groups to promote more use of recycled paper and less use of ancient trees while producing books. Natural healing author and physician Dr. Andrew Weil has made a similar pledge. In Walker’s case, her last three books were printed on recycled paper. She has the practice written into her contract with Random House.

“I have always felt a kinship with trees,” says Walker in a statement for the non-profit Green Press Initiative (www. greenpressinitiative.org). “It is a torture to know that they have died for my words to live.”

This year, publishers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and Israel joined Canada’s Raincoast Books in printing the new Harry Potter edition on recycled paper.

Fast work

In its first 24 hours on sale, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” book number six of the Harry Potter series and the fastest-selling book in history, sold 6.9 million copies in the United States alone. That’s approximately 250,000 books per hour. The first U.S. press run is estimated at 11 million.

“I was really eager for this book to come out,” recalls Katriona, who circled the Harry Potter release date on her calendar back in February.

While the world swarmed to neighborhood bookstores, Katriona, who enters third grade this fall, sat at home and waited. She waited an extra five days for her forest-friendly book to arrive. The book cost $2 more (not including shipping costs) on Amazon.ca.

“Five days is a lot for me because I read [the Potter books] in about two days,” says Katriona, a Potter fan with pencil straight hair and a bedroom full of books. “I could have read the book twice while waiting for it from Canada.”

“I have to say that I was quite surprised,” says Katriona’s mother, Kendall Guthrie. “I gave Katie the choice. I told her about Raincoast Books and I thought that she would say ‘No, I want my book right away’.”

Instead, the prospect of saving a tree—the American book publishing industry uses upwards of 20 million trees each year—was something quite personal for Katriona. She immediately saw the connection between her Potter book and the revered forest.

“I know that trees and animals have just as much right to live as we do,” says Katriona. She speaks with the certainty that 8-year-olds possess and does not pause for breath. “I know that I am probably saving a tree’s life, but I am saving birds lives too. Lots of birds can make their nest in one tree and then make lots of bird babies.”

Thinking like Katriona’s may not be coming a moment too soon.

If the Amazon rainforest is one lung of planet earth, then the Boreal forest is the other. The Boreal, which extends from interior Alaska across the middle of Canada all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, is one of the largest intact forests left on earth. Three billion birds, nearly half of all North American birds, breed in the Boreal each year. It is home to caribou, wolves, Aspen, spruce and, of course, millions of baby birds.

“The Boreal forest is as much water as it is trees,” says Lane Nothman, operations director for the Seattle-based Boreal Songbird Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting that forest’s migratory songbirds. “It is interlaced with wetlands, bogs, lakes and rivers and that is part of the reason that birds love it and it is so critical to bird life.”

What’s more, the Boreal plays an especially important role in purifying the planet. It is considered a sort of carbon sink. Worldwide, the Boreal accounts for 43 percent of carbon sucked from the air and sealed into trees and their soils.

“The Boreal is one of the best defenses against global warming,” explains Nothman.

Open season

Too bad the Boreal itself needs defending. The forest is currently wide open to exploitation. Less than 8 percent of the Boreal is under wilderness protection. Half of Canada’s boreal forests and nearly 40 percent of British Columbia’s ancient rainforests are routinely logged to produce paper. Approximately 1.5 million acres of Boreal forestland are cut each year just to make paper alone. Trees are logged at a rate of two acres a minute, 24 hours a day.

“There is a tremendous conservation opportunity here,” says Nothman, referring to a green publishing movement to publish books on recycled paper. “In the Boreal, there’s a chance for large-scale protection.”

The American Forest & Paper Association estimates that recycled paper represents less than 5 percent of the fiber used in the printing and writing market. Nearly 95 percent of the paper and fiber for book production comes from newly cut trees.

“Can’t we do any better than that?” asks Nicole Rycroft, the campaigns director of Markets Initiative, a conservation group in Vancouver, B.C. It has especially targeted the Bible and Harry Potter editions as a way to shift the publishing industry away from ancient-forest paper sources.

Already, more than 70 of Canada’s leading publishing houses (about 75 percent of all literary publishers) and 90 U.S. publishing companies (mostly small and vanity presses) have committed to eliminate the use of ancient-forest papers from their books.

When the sixth Harry Potter book was published this summer, both Greenpeace and the National Wildlife Federation created e-mail campaigns to encourage members to buy from Raincoast and boycott Scholastic. More than 12,000 Greenpeace members from a 300,000-person list e-mailed Scholastic with their intentions. Here in a Seattle local events were held to make it easy for book buyers to order a recycled edition.

For its part, Scholastic spokesman Kyle Good has responded in newspapers such as the New York Times and USA Today that “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is not printed on recycled paper but “we absolutely don’t use wood fiber from ancient forests.”

Supplying and demanding

Raincoast Books prints more than 95 percent of its text-based books on ancient-forest friendly paper. When the large-house Canadian publisher printed almost 1 million copies of the last Harry Potter book on recycled paper, enough trees were saved to more than fill Seward Park and Discovery Park combined. Raincoast has been very pleased with its ability to get the paper it needs, deflating the notion that supply wouldn’t match demand if big U.S. publishers went to recyled paper. Many paper industry leaders concede that if larger publishers wanted recycled paper, the supply flow would be there.

“From the Canadian perspective, the decision that we made was not a publicity effort,” explains Jamie Broadhurst, director of marketing at Raincoast. He explains that printing with sustainability in mind is a core principle of the company.

“It is something that Canadian consumers expect,” he says.

Tyson Miller, founder of the Green Press Initiative, hopes other publishers will follow Raincoast’s example.

“If a publisher has a policy in place and they are communicating that policy, it changes the way that paper is made across the entire supply chain,” explains Miller. He hopes to help publishers eliminate their use of endangered forest paper in three to five years.

The Green Press Initiative is seeking out booksellers too. For instance, it has partnered with Portland-based Powell’s Books, which highlights more than 700 books on its Web site that have been green press-certified. The books must be printed on at least 30 percent recycled paper and/or paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as having come from sustainable forestland. And the publishers must have adopted a meaningful policy that states their commitment to eliminating their use of endangered forest fiber.

“There aren’t many people who are going to say I want to kill trees to get my books,” saves Dave Weich, director of marketing and development for Powell’s Books. “We definitely feel like there is a customer base out there that really cares about this issue. And I don’t think you are going to find a lot of opposition.”

Ritzy Ryciak wrote Evergreen Monthly’s August cover story on kids, nature and intelligence.

For more information on the green publishing movement visit:

Green Press Initiative
greenpressinitiative.org

The Boreal Songbird Initiative
www.borealbirds.org

Powell’s Books Green Press Initiative section
www.powells.com/psection/GreenPressInitiative.html

Canada-based, Market’s Initiative
www.oldgrowthfree.com

Raincoast Books
www.raincoast.com

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