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Markets Initiative

Q& A with Nicole Rycroft, Founder and Executive Director

Markets Initiative is on a mission to protect and preserve the earth’s endangered forests. They ask the world’s largest paper consumers, "Where does your paper come from?," as they work tirelessly to shift demand - and use - to sustainable paper products. So far, more than 600 publishers and brands in North America, have stopped to listen. Best known for greening the Harry Potter series, Markets Initiative is changing the way the world consumes paper.

Isn’t paper mostly recycled these days?

No unfortunately. Even I naively, thought most paper came from recycling, but 71% of the world’s paper is still coming from environmentally sensitive areas. 60% of trees logged in the Canada’s Boreal forest, the lungs of this earth, are used to produce paper.

Why the Harry Potter books?

We had our sights set on a high profile book that we could showcase to convince publishers to switch to environmental papers. Apart from the bible, there’s no bigger title in the world than Harry Potter – both in forest impact and shifting culture.

How was Harry Potter’s author JK Rowling involved?

Her willingness to support this campaign publicly took this to a whole new level. We worked with her and her Canadian publisher back in 2003 to ensure the Canadian edition was printed on an environmental paper. It was the only one internationally and integrated her green message into the core of the marketing – reaching millions of Potter fans. It caught like wild fire; thousands of stories were written internationally on forests and publishing ‘green’. When her next book came out in 2005, it was ‘green’ in 9 countries, and then the last book in the series was ‘green’ in 25 countries; with a US print run alone of 12 million books – amassing huge ecological savings.

Are you at the “tipping point”?

We continue to provide market leverage for the Great Bear Rainforest, Clayoquot Sound and we’re very involved in efforts to safeguard Canada’s Boreal. We’re getting close to transforming the environmental impacts of the Canadian magazine and book publishing industries. However we’re just getting started with shifting North American newspapers and text book publishers. Given that newsprint impacts more forests than any other sector, we still have a lot of work to do.

What is the wheat sheet?

One solution we’re committed to kickstarting is the use of straw (left over from the grain harvest) in paper rather than old growth forests. The wheat sheet is about using straw, a by-product of our annual grain harvest, to make paper rather than continuing to deplete our carbon and species rich forests. In June 2008, we successfully brought Canadian Geographic magazine to the newsstand on paper which used 60% fewer trees than most magazines; 20% wheat straw, and 40% recycled content. We grow a lot of wheat and flax here in Canada, and although much of the straw gets ploughed back into the land, a large volume is burnt or disposed. There’s an incredible opportunity to use this to make paper – to use what is essentially a waste product to alleviate stresses on our intact forests and climate.

It’s about dealing with the problem at a systemic level – now we need financial backing to bring the Wheat Sheet to commercial scale!