Publishing industry’s pulping secret

Feature

Do book lovers deserve the sort of eco-righteous sneers normally reserved for SUV drivers? According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, book and magazine purchases account for around 2.3% of the average Australian’s CO2 emissions footprint. Read more than the average Australian and you may not be too far behind the roughly 10% of the average emissions footprint linked to petrol put into cars.

Curling up under the A/C with a good…

No one’s suggesting we read fewer books to counter global warming, but the ACF does want us to buy fewer new books and magazines, suggesting we opt for secondhand books, share magazines and join libraries. It’s the sort of advice that would horrify profit-motivated publishers and retailers if it had any impact on spending patterns.

[While book publishers derive little benefit from the second hand market, magazine publishers are more likely to encourage sharing and reuse of their products because they generate most of their income through advertising. However, magazines and newspapers generally have a much more limited lifespan than books, and their disposable nature generates waste, even when they’re recycled.]

Luckily for publishers and retailers, most people still don’t associate buying a new book or magazine with global warming, despite the fact that we’re literally walking away with little chunks of forest every time we buy these printed paper products.

Printing and publishing is highly paper intensive, toxic inks are commonly used, and greywater byproducts created. Finished books and magazines also need to be transported long distances to retail shelves.

Heads-in-the-Sand

It’s not just consumers that bear responsibility for the book market’s environmental impacts, the big players in the publishing industry are dragging their feet when it comes to greening their businesses.

In the book market, it’s not what is consumed that creates the most waste, but what isn’t. Agreements with retailers see unsold books returned to be pulped. When a book bombs at retail, returns can be huge. None of the big publishers I contacted would reveal the extent of their returns. However, a spokeswoman for Random House Australia said they’d managed to reduce the figure by around 20% over recent years. Although Random House doesn’t mention returns or ink toxicity in its Green Policy, at least it has one.

Most big publishers seem to be in denial. Their sluggish response to growing concern over environmentally damaging industries belies the direct and significant impact that print publishing has on our environment. There’s no doubt big publishers would like to keep the public in the dark about policies like the pulping of returns.

Where’s the leadership?

The Australian Publishers Association, which claims to represent “85% of publishers”, operates on a business orientated charter, that includes the objective of:

• Encouraging best practice throughout the publishing supply chain incorporating environmental sustainability frameworks.

However, it’s smaller independents, like Melbourne’s Vignette Press, that are really leading the way on environmentally responsible publishing. Vignette has proactively adopted ethical guidelines designed to minimise negative environmental impacts. They’ve committed to:

• Conduct business in a sustainable way, avoiding unnecessary use of energy, paper and materials.
• Only print books and magazines on 100 per cent recycled paper.
• Use the most energy efficient print processes available.
• Strive to maintain a ‘no pulping’ policy.

Beyond the cost to their bottom lines, there’s no reason why Australia’s big publishers can’t follow the lead of smaller independents and take steps to reduce the eco-footprint of their products, such as choosing environmentally friendlier print processes like soy-based inks, ensuring their paper is truly from renewable sources, implementing better policies to limit returns, and investing a percentage of profits in projects that offset CO2 emissions.

posted by seamas on March 22, 2009 at 3:45 pm · filed under