Mums reading children’s books about the pristine forests of the world, on paper made partially from destroying these very forests, is a sad reality – still. This study shows the second W WF analysis of children’s books from major publishers in Germany, and concludes that they still contain significant amounts of tropical rainforest fibres. Book imports to Germany from China have increased dramatically in recent years. And indirectly, fibres from forest destruction in, for example, Indonesia, reach German customers. WWF remarks that other book types or paper product ranges could be affected as well.

On the global level, Germany is an important pulp and paper buyer. Also, the German book market is – with a turnover of 9.6 billion EUR in 2011 – quite big. Children’s books achieve the second largest turnover in book sales. W WF Germany decided to have a closer look at the publishing sector to showcase the link between forest destruction in the tropics and paper products on the European market..

Today over 40% of German book imports stem from Asia. The amount of storybooks imported from China and Hongkong has even multiplied by a factor of 12 between 2000 and 2011..

China has become a global player in the paper sector in recent years. Half of the worldwide increase in paper and paperboard production since 1990 is attributable to China. China is however also the world’s largest pulp importer – Out of 23.9 million tonnes of pulp used in China in 2011, 64% or 15.2 million tonnes were imported. It is not surprising that China as an important paper producer without sufficient own fibre resources imports pulp from neighbouring countries, like Indonesia.

Rainforest Action Network developed this report and consumer guide to help consumers make environmentally- friendly choices at the bookstore and to encourage publishers and booksell- ers to make more responsible choices about what paper they buy and what books they sell.

WWF has therefore tested a number of children’s books from Southeast Asia for traces of tropical wood. The results are sobering: in 19 out of 51 children’s books tested, significant traces of tropical wood were present. The types of wood found do not typically occur in plantations but rather in natural and tropical forests. Furthermore, extensive destruction of tropical forest by the Indonesian paper industry, now expanding into China, has been a well-known fact for years and continues to be a tragic reality. The logical conclusion is that for those books which were tested positive for tropical wood, with the utmost probability natural tropical forest was destroyed or even cleared.