creating a culture of climate action
Books inspire ideas, imagination, and change, but they also have an environmental footprint. From paper sourcing and printing to distribution, consumption, and disposal, every stage of a book’s life cycle has climate impacts.
This virtual panel, hosted by JB on the 23rd of April 2026, brought together voices from across the book ecosystem to explore how the sector is responding, what initiatives already exist, and where meaningful change can happen next. The conversation highlighted practical, realistic actions that authors, publishers, and libraries can take to reduce their environmental impact and embed sustainability into everyday decision-making.
Whether you create, distribute, care for, or simply love books, this session invites you to help build a more climate-conscious future for publishing. For more about JB’s work with publishing, see here.
You can find the recordings here.
You can find Graciela Melitsko Thornton’s blog about the event here.
speakers
Piers Torday (Author)
Piers Torday’s Last Wild series of children’s books examines themes of biodiversity loss, including The Wild Before, a showcase attempt at publishing a sustainable book. His plays, The Box of Delights (RSC) and The Wind in the Wilton’s (Wilton’s Music Hall) were produced to the sustainable standards in the Theatre Green Book. He has been a judge for the Sustainable Story Award and is also the first Chair of the UK Society of Authors Sustainability Network Steering Committee.
Piers explored the role authors can play in climate action, from content choices and contractual advocacy to using their public platforms to influence change. He will also reflect on current sustainability conversations within the authors’ community.
Hannah Trevarthen (Place Making & Literature)
Hannah is the Director of Nottingham City of Literature and a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities of Literature Coordination Team. Prior to this, she worked at English PEN as Events and Partnerships Manager and Interim Director. Between 2019 and 2022, she led Common Currency, English PEN’s centenary celebration. She began her career in the programming team at Edinburgh International Book Festival and serves on advisory boards for Bad Betty Press, New Nottingham Journal, and the Oxford Brookes University Publishing Advisory Board.
Maja Maricevic (Director of Science and Innovation, British Library)
Dr Maja Maricevic is Director of Science and Innovation at the British Library. She is a founding member and former Chair of the UK Green Libraries Campaign and was awarded CILIP’s Presidential Citation in 2025 for her contribution to expanding the campaign’s reach. She has also served on the Advisory Group for the UKRI programme Building a Greener Future and currently chairs London’s Knowledge Quarter.
Maja spoke about green library initiatives and sector-wide efforts connected to CILIP, focusing on the ways in which libraries are adjusting their own operations to be greener and how they collaborate to achieve a more efficient national ecosystem
Facilitated by: Graciela Melitsko Thornton, Creative Green Lead, Julie’s Bicycle
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