Safe and resilient forests: Commission works for wildfire prevention in Europe and globally

• The estimated combined loss of trees from the 50 best sellers analysed came to a whopping 100,998,090!
• Global sales from ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ is estimated to have resulted in the loss of nearly 5 million trees.
• The entire Harry Potter series has potentially taken nearly 24 million trees – the equivalent size of Scotland’s Glengarry Forest!
• Eco expert, Linda Dodge provides thorough advice on how switching your reading habits can help benefit the planet.

Over the past year, it’s perhaps unsurprising book sales have skyrocketed, with ‘Big 5’ member Bloomsbury Publishing reporting their profit before tax climbing by 60%, as the firm delivered its highest first-half earnings since 2008.

And although we can draw on the positives that more people are reading, there are environmental concerns associated, which inspired eco experts at SaveOnEnergy.com/uk to investigate potential loss of trees cut down for paper to have supplied the world’s best-selling books.

To do this, SaveOnEnergy.com/uk comprehensively compiled a list of the 50 best-selling books of all time and multiplied their approximate sales by their first edition page count. This was then divided by 10,000, the estimated figure of how many sheets of paper one standard pine tree produces.

SaveOnEnergy.com/uk can reveal the book potentially contributing most to the loss of trees globally is the fifth instalment to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series,‘The Order of the Phoenix’.

The first edition of this instalment has a whopping 766 pages and has celebrated approximately 65 million sales globally, potentially equivalent to nearly 5 million trees lost to fuel our love for the young wizard.

In second place is ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy. With 36.4 million in global sales, SaveOnEnergy anticipated a potential loss of 4,410,000 trees.

Thereafter in third and joint fourth are more novels from the Harry Potter franchise: ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ with 4,134,000 estimated trees cut down, ‘Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ with 3,945,500 estimated trees cut down.

In fifth place is ‘The Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown, with the mystery thriller potentially costing planet earth around 3,912,000 trees.

And rounding off the top 10 is the first instalment to the wizardry series ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ with an estimated 2,676,000 trees removed.

The authors’ best-selling books potentially costing the most trees:

SaveOnEnergy.com/uk discovered that across all 50 books analysed, the author potentially contributing the largest decline in the number of trees cut down worldwide is J. K. Rowling – nearly 24 million trees, equivalent to the size of Scotland’s Glengarry Forest for all Harry Potter instalments.

Placing second is Dan Brown with his novels having sold enough sales equivalent to the potential loss of 6,314,400 trees. Out of 43 authors across 50 of the best-selling books, only two authors have more than one best-selling book.

SaveOnEnergy’s Linda Dodge has commented on the findings: “Although it’s somewhat frightening how many potential trees may have been lost to these best-selling books, this shouldn’t stop us from reading. Instead, we should consider our carbon footprint and adapt by trying e-reading. eBooks are often available for as little as £1 and don’t cost the life of a tree. And the benefit? You can carry with you as many books as you’d like; whether it be on your iPhone, iPad, laptop, Kindle or tablet.”

For more information and a more in-depth breakdown on the best sellers, authors’, and genre, please see the blog post.

Methodology

1. To do this, SaveOnEnergy.com/uk compiled a list together of the 50 best-selling books of all time.
2. To investigate how many estimated sheets of paper have been printed, SaveOnEnergy.com/uk pulled together the data for the approximate sales from each book and multiplied it by the first edition page count.
3. After powering through multiple sources, SaveOnEnergy.com/uk utilised the statistic that a standard pine tree (45ft by 8 inches) will produce an estimated 10,000 sheets of paper.
4. SaveOnEnergy.com/uk then divided that figure by the number sheets of paper printed to generate the estimated number of trees supplied.

Disclaimer

• Due to multiple editions varying in page numbers, the page count used was from the first edition of the book.
• The book’s Wikipedia page was sourced to find the page count of each 1st edition book.
• Tree density in primary forests varies from 50,000-100,000 trees per square km. Glengarry Forest is 165 km.

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