Book description
From the medical sheets in maternity wards to our death certificates,
paper charts the course of our lives. Paradoxically, it spreads ideas
and learning as well as thousands of tons of junk mail, yet our
dependence on this material is damaging our planet and creating
mountains of unnecessary waste.
Mandy Haggith explores our society's obsession with paper, from its
invention in China 2000 years ago to the millions of tonnes we now use
every year. Following the paper trail around the world, Mandy
discovers the human stories of those affected by the industry, from a
Russian ecologist, a Finnish logger and Indonesian tribal leaders, to
a Canadian publisher and a Vietnamese paper technologist.
In the process, she uncovers the paper industry's dirtiest secrets
and sets out simple, practical steps we can take to minimise our own
personal use of 20 tonnes of paper over our lifetime.
Mandy Haggith is a freelance writer, researcher and activist. She has
spent the past decade campaigning for the world's forests, including
lobbying at the United Nations, working as a consultant for Greenpeace
and WWF and writing articles for
Pulp and Paper International
and
Resurgence
magazine. Her novel
The Last Bear
won the 2009 Robin Jenkins Award, the UK's first environmental book
prize.
