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Book Production Goes Green
NEW YORK (AP) - The latest report about the publishing industry does not compile
sales figures, track the market for fiction or lament the future of reading.
It does tell a great deal about books - not what they say, but what they are
made of.
“
Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts” is an 86-page summary, printed
on 50 percent post-consumer recycled paper and full of charts about fiber,
endangered forests and carbon footprints. The news: The book world, which uses
up more than
1.5 million metric tons of paper each year, is steadily, if not entirely, finding
ways to make production greener.
“
I was very pleasantly surprised,” said Tyson Miller, founder and director
of the Green Press initiative, a nonprofit program which has worked extensively
with publishers on environmental issues. “We’re seeing a groundswell
of momentum and real measurable progress.”
Commercially, publishers have certainly discovered the benefits of green,
with best-sellers including Deirdre Imus’ “Green This!” and Al Gore’s
companion guide to the Academy Award-winning movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Environmental
themes can be found in novels, children’s stories and business books.
But reading books is healthier than making them. The climate impact survey,
co-commissioned by Green Press and the nonprofit Book Industry Study Group,
offers a mixed picture
about industry practices.
There is great support in theory for going greener, but results are uneven.
Just over half of publishers, for instance, have set specific goals for increasing
use of recycled paper. About 60 percent have a formal environmental policy
or
are in the process of completing one.
Declining to name any specific companies, Miller said “the other 40 percent
just aren’t taking the issue seriously or they aren’t willing to
pay a penny more to move in the right direction.
“
But,” he added, “critical mass has no doubt been reached and my sense
is that the majority of those publishers that aren’t acting will step
up and join their peers in this effort.”
Seventy-six publishers, representing just under half of the market, participated
in the study, along with 13 printers (about 25 percent and six paper mills
(about 17 percent.)
One publisher that has not set targets is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A spokesman
says Houghton “has been actively working to increase usage of recycled
papers in its print products and has in fact substantially increased its use
of recycled papers in recent years.
“
While we haven’t formally adopted corporate-wide percentage goals for use
of recycled papers, we are currently reviewing procurement policies from the
standpoint of environmental impact,” spokesman Rick blake told the Associated
Press.
Regnery Publishing, a conservative press based in Washington, D.C., also
has not set any targets and has no plan to do so. Jim Zerr, Regnery’s
director of production and distribution, said the reasion is not ideology,
but economics;
recycled paper is more expensive than regular paper.
Compared to late 2001, when Miller began working with publishers, cooperation
is easy. “University presses and a few smaller presses were making progress,” he
says, but no major company had announced any public environmental goals. Now,
around 150 publishers, along with 10 printers and four paper manufacturers,
have backed a treatise supporting recycled paper and fiber from forests certified
by the Forest Stewardship Council, an international environmental organization.
A turning point came in 2006 when Random House, inc., said that it would
dramatically increase its use of recycled paper, saving more than 500,000 trees
a year.
“
We were already working on our own environmental initiatives, but to have Random
House step up like that encourages everyone in the industry to come forward,” said
publisher Liz Perl of Rodale, which published Gore’s “An Inconvenient
Truth” and has another environmental book by the former vice president
scheduled for 2009.
Miller says he would like to see the industry’s carbon footprint (a measure
of greenhouse gases produced) cut in half by making 50 percent of all book
paper recycled fiber, more than triple the current level, and continued efforts
to
reduce paper use and energy consumption. He questions one possible solution
- releasing all books electronically.
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