Children's column: Costa triumphs for green publishers

Written by Nicolette Jones

Friday, 09 January 2009 11:29

Michelle Magorian’s triumph as the Costa Children’s Book of the Year winner with Just Henry makes it a prize double for Egmont, which also carried off the older category of the first Roald Dahl Funny Prize, with Andy Stanton and David Tazzyman’s Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear. This is fine recognition for the publisher. But it also deserves an accolade for a quieter achievement.

You might think that among the shortlisted titles - also including Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries 2015, Keith Gray’s Ostrich Boys, and Jenny Valentine’s Broken Soup - Saci Lloyd’s was obviously the “greenest”, with its theme of carbon rationing in the near future. But Just Henry is just as green, because it is a product of the Ethical Egmont initiative masterminded by Egmont production director Alison Kennedy.

The attempt to be an ethical publisher, which has been developed over many years at Egmont, has three strands: Safety First, which ensures high safety standards for small children, particularly on novelty books, and has required spreading awareness among editors, designers and illustrators; Made Fairly, which sets standards of working conditions in source factories; and Responsible Forestry, which has espoused FSC standards and eliminated all unknown and dodgy sources for paper (which may not only entail illegal logging, but be bound up with other unscrupulous businesses such as drug-running).

Nobly, Kennedy and Egmont Press Director Cally Poplak, in a truly green and ethical spirit, decided that it was not enough to pursue these aims alone; they should work to embrace the wider publishing industry in all three areas. High safety standards are already set by, for instance, the Disney Corporation, with which Egmont works, so Egmont is among a number of companies that spread the word. Factory audits were already conducted by industry bodies; greater co-operation between companies has rationalised these to ensure that group audits are being made on behalf of many businesses. And Egmont developed its own copyrighted system for rating paper, and assembled a forum in 2006, originally of 10 publishers, which signed up to PREPS (the Publishers’ database for Responsible Environmental Paper Sourcing). This now holds details of 1,600 papers and their environmental credentials, as well as technical information, and allows publishers to use the data to make informed decisions.

Just Henry was published on FSC paper. Saci Lloyd’s book was, appropriately, published on 100% recycled paper. Random House has had, since January 2007, a procurement policy that commits the company to ensuring FSC sources for its hardbacks (though not for Ostrich Boys - a B format paperback). And HarperCollins, publisher of Broken Soup, was one of the founding members of PREPS.

Which may make this the greenest Costa children’s shortlist yet.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this

Comments (0) Add Comment