BOOKS TO HELP YOUR CHILDREN 'SAVE THE PLANET'

Here at Lovereading, we aren’t just passionate about good books; we are also passionate about doing our bit to help ‘save the planet’ in any way we can. So we thought you might appreciate a bit of guidance on what books are out there that might enthuse your children into thinking, and being a bit greener.

Our selection includes books which are highly topical covering everything from recycling and biodiversity to global warming and topical eco-tips, and even measuring your carbon footprint. But, we’ve also chosen a number of novels and picture books that have some sort of eco-friendly strand. We hope you enjoy our selection, which will be expanded throughout 2008 so do come back again to check these out.

You may feel it’s wrong to be promoting books with a green theme because books in themselves are not at first glance exactly green or carbon neutral, for trees are cut down to make them. However, let us assure you that publishers in the UK are all working extremely hard to achieve ethical business practice and some publishers are even achieving zero carbon emissions via carbon offsetting.

Like Egmont (www.egmont.co.uk) for example, who made the decision three years ago to commit to ethical business practices. Their whole manufacturing processes had to change, Greenpeace was consulted and now they use only paper that is approved by the Forestry Stewardship Council. Harper Collins, one of the largest global publishers has already gone carbon neutral in its commitment to address climate change and at the other end of the size scale there is Meadowside Books, a small but perfectly formed small children’s publisher who is very proud to use the carbon neutral logo on their books. Piccadilly Press use paper which is approved by the Forestry Stewardship Council for their fiction and non-fiction titles. For their picture books they are working with their printers in the Far East to ensure all paper used is similarly certified. As a small independent company, all paper, cardboard, plastic, cartridges, tins, bottles and anything that can be recycled is taken to the local recycling centre each week. As a consequence Piccadilly Press have reduced their non-recyclable waste to virtuallly nil over the last four years. Barefoot Books is committed to green issues, and this commitment is evident through all manufacture and distribution processes. Barefoot only use paper that is ‘ancient forest friendly’ and are looking to move towards full FSC or equivalent status in 2009. They use vegetable based inks, and all units leaving their manufacturers are consolidated into monthly shipments to lessen their transport based carbon footprint. Furthermore, they're aiming to bring some of their production back to the UK, which will have a huge impact in reducing the number of miles a book travels to get to the reader. In addition, Barefoot are currently discussing the publication of several green flagship titles which will be as green as they possibly can be – soya ink, printed in UK or Europe using locally sourced 100% recycled paper. For more detail on any of these publishers do go to their own websites.

We hope you enjoy the selection of titles and do keep coming back as we will add more on a monthly basis.