Harry Potter 7: "The Most Greenwashed Book of All Time"

Everyone is gaga over HP7 being "the greenest book of all time" and showing the silly graphic showing the "impact reduction" of its publishing worldwide. We knew that Raincoast Books in Canada has published its version in ancient forest free 100% recycled paper, but they did that for HP6 and all of their books, nothing new there. We know also that the author asked that all of her publishers use 100% recycled content.

Yet the biggest publisher of them all, Scholastic, serving the American market, refused. TreeHugger emeritus Hank Green notes that "only 65% of the pulp used in HP7 (American edition) is certified ancient-forest friendly." So 130,000 trees have been saved but how many have been chopped because of Scholastic's intransigence?

That 35% of a doorstop the size and print run of the American Harry Potter probably represents more trees lost than any other book published in the States this year. Hank says "Scholastic is being fairly backward and profit-driven here. How much cash do they really need to haul here. Honestly, they could pass the cost onto the consumer and absolutely no one would mind."

It is surprising that smart American green websites would fall for this international averaging out of Scholastic's boreal clearcut. ::Eco-Geek

UPDATE: A commenter accuses me of being negative again: "Can't we just be happy with the efforts they did make, not the efforts they didn't?" No, not when they are calling it "the greenest book of all time" which it clearly is not. We applaud them for their efforts, not their public relations.