| Pages: | 242 pages |
| Dimensions: | 12.7 x 20.32 cm x 1.55cm x 331g |
| Publisher: | Habitat Press |
| Date Published: | 26 February 2026 |
| ISBN-10: | 1068270330 |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1068270338 |
As a small indie publisher, we rely on readers to help spread the word about our books. If you want to support our mission to promote sustainable behaviour through fabulous fiction, please review this book once you’ve read it!
Click here to review The Last Plastic Fork on Amazon or here for alternative reader-led review sites.
The Last Plastic Fork and Other Green Epiphanies is a collection of flash-fiction stories, less than 500-words each, that capture moments of transformation when suddenly the world is seen in a different way, and in particular, for the greener.
Find out more about how Green Stories Project and the its cultural body of work that entertains and informs about green solutions here.
Reviews
“Short, Sweet and Snappy – these will open wide the windows of your mind!” Manda Scott, author of Any Human Power and the Boudica series
“Wonderfully quirky and uplifting – brilliant climate communication that doesn’t bash you over the head!” Stuart Goldsmith, Climate Comedian
“What a joy! Piercing shafts of green light in the encircling gloom.” Jonathon Porritt, Founder Forum for the Future
“Lovely flash stories that put the moral epiphany back at the heart of environmental crisis and action.” Andrew Dana Hudson, author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures and Absence.
“A night time encounter with tens of thousands of eels helped turn me into the so-called “Godfather of Sustainability.” This extraordinary book celebrates the epiphanies that turn so many of us into changemakers.” John Elkington, sustainability pioneer and author of Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability
Tony Emerson –
Review of ‘The last plastic fork and other green epiphanies’
Edited by Rananda Rich
This anthology gathers together stories from the Green Stories Project flash fiction competition on the theme of ‘epiphanies’.
It is a compilation of over forty 500-word flash fiction pieces submitted for a competition run by the Southampton University Green Stories programme. The philosophy behind this programme is that you can influence people more by stories than you can by statistics or rational argument. That stories can engage people not already engaged. And stories with positive themes are more effective than the usual environmental doomsday scenarios. So, like the old Heineken ad it aims to reach parts that other lagers don’t reach…
The editor asserts that after reading all these short pieces she’s now living a much greener lifestyle, that she can now truly smell the flowers and appreciate the trees as well as refraining from purchasing throwaway items.
These very short stories certainly covered a broad range of topics. And if you are looking for ideas on how to live a greener life, then buy this book. Some of the little stories mentioned below are quite entertaining.
But would this anthology actually engage people who were not already committed to environmentalism? ‘Look at the cars’ was a good piece of dialogue, embedded in societal reality, but a bit pessimistic about bringing about a better reality. ‘On trash, exes and other things’ was also well embedded in societal reality, as was ‘The last plastic fork’ and many of the other pieces. I also liked the reference to MATT the zero waste collective. Others were less reality-based. ‘Make men want it’ as a good critique of the advertising process, but an agency with a contract to promote Mercedes cars cannot extol the virtues of cycling. But one piece, ‘The football pitch switch’ actually annoyed me as a football and team game fan. Did this football mum have any kind of active interest in her little boy’s football? For instance what position was he playing in? Was she trying to support the coach who was spending his or her Saturday morning in all sorts of weather supporting her son? Besides is a veggie burger, her reward to her son, any better environmentally than a meat one?
And even if it did engage the uncommitted, what would it commit them to? The ethos of this publication is that the way to a sustainable future is through enough individual people adopting greener or environmentally friendly lifestyles. But to avoid a climate and biodiversity calamity we need change at all levels, political, parochial, personal. ‘Parochial’ includes the local and the local business or institution. Could there not have been stories about battles with MPs about supporting some proposed legislation to outlaw planned obsolescence (as France has enacted), or about achievements in setting up solar enterprise co-operatives? Two mention just two examples of the direction I’d like to see the Green Stories programme moving in.
Tony Emerson
(author of Creating Hope in the valley of the Bourne and Bournebridge over troubled waters, two cli-fi ebooks available on Amazon and Kobo)
Rev Sarah Hall –
These stories cover so many aspects of climate change and biodiversity, from so many global perspectives, and in such a hopeful way, encouraging us to find our own epiphanies. I’m taking the book as a prompt to find and plant last year’s runner beans, and will recommend it to my church Green Living group.