Small supply chain changes can green up the industry, key players say

Key high street retailers, printing companies and publishers are enacting changes in their supply chains to reduce their carbon footprint, delegates at the The Bookseller's FutureBook conference heard. 

Zoe Cokeliss Barsley, director of sustainability at Oxford University Press, said the press has launched a target to print on 100% sustainable paper — OUP is set to achieve around 75% certified paper this year, up from around 65% last year. The press has also moved to focus on warehouse efficiency, reducing airfreighting this year, racking up “incremental changes” to reduce its overall carbon footprint.

Kate Stillborn, director of operations at Blackwells, worked with a third party to measure the high street retailer’s carbon footprint.

“From that metric we came up with a set of actions, including switching electricity to green suppliers, looking at our packaging — and quick things such as taking Jiffy bags out of packaging, which we’ve nearly completely done - and switching to cardboard wraps”. The Oxford branch has always delivered free to customers living within the Oxford ring road, and during the pandemic it scrapped vans and sent out books via bicycles, a model it has kept since. 

Georgia Amson-Bradshaw, publisher at Wide Eyed Editions and Ivy Kids said government, industry and individuals need to interact to move towards greener practices.

“Consumers can influence what businesses are doing through what they will and won't buy, and businesses can offer greener alternatives,” she said.

After switching Clays to an energy company that claimed to be greener, sales director Vicky Ellis discovered the opposite was true. 

“Who is policing what people are saying,” she said.  “There needs to be some [government] legislation or monitoring about these organisations, which say they are delivering [greener alternatives]”. Ellis said print on demand (p.o.d.) is a practice that has much potential moving forward, but should be blended with the traditional model of printing, rather than replacing it entirely.

“There’s definitely a place for both,” she said. “You’ve got to think about what the carbon footprint would be of manufacturing all that equipment for print on demand."

Commenting on the environmental impact of print publishing versus digital, Cokeliss Barsley said people in the industry are  still “quite wedded to the idea of print production".

She added: “A digital book has a footprint about a tenth of print book — regardless of the fact that you do need energy to run the data systems and all the devices — you use don’t need to cut trees down, you don't need the inks — or glue." Despite this, she said the “data still isn’t there” to accurately gauge the carbon footprint of digital publications. 

Greener policies do come with some trade offs, Amson-Bradshaw said. “The sustainable alternatives for the books we print  are much plainer: the uncoated covers, pages printed using water-based inks, you can’t use all the fancy glitters that are particularly popular in the children's market. 

Author Jay Griffiths said the government’s responsibility was central to any changes. “It's absolutely incredible and brilliant that the publishing industry is looking so carefully at what [individuals] can do. But the government is legally obliged to fully inform citizens of the nature and speed of climate change. We have to take this so unbelievably seriously.” 

Commenting on the role of writers addressing the climate, she said “the best way to write about this issue is to dwell within it so deeply — to write something that doesn’t have this issue with at least a hinterland of what we’re dealing with, will look very stupid in the future”.