A new campaign has been launched to help authors hold publishers to account when it comes to sustainability.

Tree to Me has been created by the Society of Authors, which says the campaign “adds authors’ voices to efforts to achieve net zero in the publishing industry”.

The campaign is the latest in a series of initiatives launched by the publishing industry to help it become more sustainable, including the launch of the Sustainability Industry Forum, a cross-industry initiative designed to tackle the negative impact of the book business.

Publishing’s environmental impact is significant, and includes the manufacture of paper, the transportation of books from printers – oftentimes in China – to warehouses and then to retailers, and the use of chemicals in things such as inks.

Tree to Me sets out 10 questions authors should ask their publishers around sustainability, covering topics including which materials are used in book production and packaging to finding out which sources of energy are consumed.

Author Piers Torday, chair of the Society of Authors’s sustainability steering committee, said that “authors need to be able to have clear and transparent conversations with publishers about their impact on the planet”.

Torday’s The Wild Before was published sustainably; publisher Quercus Children’s made the book sealant-, plastic- and foil-free, and it was printed on FSC paper with a recycled dust jacket and recycled Wibalin, the material hardcover bookcases are made from.

The author said he wanted sustainable books to “be the norm rather than the exception”.

As well as launching Tree to Me, the Society of Authors is a founding partner in Sustainability Industry Forum, with the Association of Authors’ Agents, Book Industry Communication, the Booksellers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild and the Publishers Association.

Other industry schemes including Publishing Declares, from trade body the Publishers Association, which brings together publishing partners to commit to net zero as soon as possible, and by 2050 at the latest. The Publishers Association also launched a carbon calculator for its members in 2022, which is bespoke to the UK book and journal publishing industry and allows companies to monitor their carbon outputs across various aspects of their business, including different sites and departments.

In 2021, the Independent Publishers Guild, the trade body for independent publishers, carried out the Book Journeys Project, asking environmental experts Carnstone to analyse the sources and levels of greenhouse gas emissions and waste in six typical book journeys, from printer to end-user. From these, it created a series of recommendations.