An Eco Milestone for the US Book Industry

As we entered December, the U.S. book industry quietly passed a remarkable environmental threshold – approximately 50% (market-share) of publishers now have environmental commitments in place – most with goals and timelines for vastly improving their environmental and climate performance. This is significant due to the fact that as recent as 2001, virtually no publishers had environmental commitments on record within this $40 billion/yr industry.

This milestone was hit with the release of Hachette Book Group’s new environmental policy. Hachette is one of the top five publishers in the U.S. and the new policy commits them to a tenfold increase in recycled fiber by 2012, a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, sourcing 20% of paper certified from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), ending the use of paper that may impact Endangered Forests, and a wide range of other initiatives.

“In these challenging economic times, it is wonderful to see a company as large as Hachette making environmental stewardship a core value and coming out with an industry leading policy. This helps the industry to pass an important threshold and hopefully will motivate those larger and smaller players that are lagging to do more.” said Tyson Miller, director of the Green Press Initiative.

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