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Sustainability and Employability within the Publishing Industry.

It has only been within the past few years that my passion for sustainability arose, far more than the learning about recycling in school, I wanted to do more for our planet. I became vegan to reduce my carbon footprint (and save the animals,) I stopped buying fast fashion and am currently working towards living a more zero-waste lifestyle. However, something I had not thought about was how my career could affect my sustainability journey.


When researching about the publishing industry for this essay, (and for my own benefit,) I already knew that paper would be an issue, but I didn’t know the full extent of it. According to the blog ‘Eco-Libris’ the publishing industry uses roughly 16 million tons of paper every year; it is estimated around 20 trees yield one ton of paper. In the USA, in one-year 2 billion books are produced, which correlates to roughly 32 million trees being cut down to produce these books. I knew that a lot of paper was used to produce books, but I never imagined it was to this extent, it made me wonder how cutting down this many trees was affecting our environment. Many of the trees used for the publishing industry come from forests, by cutting down these trees, the publishing industry is destroying the wildlife there, and leaving many of the wildlife that depend on these forests vulnerable, resulting in more foxes, deer, badgers etc. to find refuge in our cities where they inevitably suffer.


Something I had not considered was the amount of energy required for book production. It turns out that the paper manufacturing industry is the 3rd largest user of fossil fuels in the world, requiring significant amounts of oil and gas at the many different stages of paper production. This not only contributes to the depletion of our natural resources, but also the increasing of the planet’s carbon footprint which is contributing to climate change. Fossil fuels aren’t just used for the manufacturing of the paper used in the publishing industry, but also the transportation, as the paper has to travel to the warehouse, then from the warehouse, then to the customer/bookshop. With the transportation of these books, it is creating more pollution which is destroying our planet.


The publishing industry also creates a lot of physical waste, such as the packaging material used for books for the production and transportation of them. But something I didn’t know about the publishing world was that many companies will estimate how many copies they’ll sell (adding a margin of error) and print that many copies. Most of the time, thousands of those copies printed won’t sell at all, and then to create the space needed for new books in the warehouse, those unsold copies will be destroyed. This not only creates an extreme amount of waste, but it means the trees killed, fuel used, pollution caused was all in vain.




I thought ‘it can’t be all bad, can it?’ The push for industries to use more sustainable practices was on the rise, so surely the publishing industry must be applying some sustainable practice of their own. The first thing I thought of was e-books and audio books. The popularity of kindles and audible subscriptions had been on the rise, mostly out of convivence of having all your books in one place, and online advertisements, but no matter the customers reasoning, it was helping the planet nonetheless. E-books and audiobooks save on paper, paper waste, transportation, fossil fuels, and pollution caused from production. Amazing right? However, upon further research, e-books/audiobooks only make up for a measly 4% of the publishing industry, the rest of books produced are still printed on paper. So, although there is this more sustainable approach available, many are still choosing to buy books in their traditional state.

Some companies, such as ‘LuLu’ and ‘Lightning Source’, are combating the amount paper waste produced in publishing buy using a ‘print on demand scheme.’ Unlike the majority of publishing companies who print an estimated number of books that they think they’ll sell, (regardless of whether they do or don’t,) print on demand scheme is when a company only prints the amount of book that they sell. Usually these companies print a much smaller number of books in one go and once they are sold they don’t print anymore unless there is a demand for it. This reduces the number of trees used and the amount of waste created. More companies need to start following this initiative to progress their sustainability approach towards publishing.


I was surprised to find that there was already a scheme towards sustainable publishing, specifically in the US, called ‘The Book Industry Treatise on Responsible Paper Use.’ I was delighted to find that 240 publishers have already signed and agreed to this scheme, but when you discover that in the US there are roughly 74,240 publishers, it’s quite disheartening. The publishers who have already agreed to this scheme should push and strive for other companies to agree to it, and should let their customers know that they are actively working towards sustainable publishing, and encourage them to push other publishers to do the same.



The question now is, if I were to work in the publishing industry, (or collaborate with a publishing company as an author) what sustainable ideas would I bring to the table? Disregarding the points made above about print on demand etc. I would suggest that more publishing companies offer a recycling initiative. Let’s for example say I end up working for the publishing company ‘Penguin,’ I would suggest that they offer and advertise a recycling scheme where people can either leave books that we have published at drop off points, or send them back to us where we will then recycle the books. This will ensure that books, whether it's in a great or damaged state, won’t end up in landfills. Following up on this point, we could then use these recycled books to create new books made entirely from recycled books, which will create a cycle, meaning less trees need to be cut down and less fossil fuel is needed for the production and transportation for new paper.


If new paper is absolutely required, I would also suggest only cutting down trees from designated areas. Although not the best idea, it will hopefully mean that wildlife can flourish and the animals who need these forests that trees are taken from can continue living in peace. To make sure we continue being able to keep using trees from designated areas, every tree that is cut and used, should be replaced by planting a new one, therefore reducing the depletion of trees in the wild. An even better idea would to also plant a tree every time a book sells, regardless of whether it is an e-book or paperback, this will create a surplus of trees, meaning more oxygen for the planet, and reduced Co2 as trees essentially ‘eat’ Co2, which will help towards the recovery of the ozone layer.



In conclusion, although the publishing industry is slowly working towards more sustainable practices, they need to do more, they need to do better. The way we produce and create books needs to change, and people’s attitudes towards books needs to become more environmentally aware, so that the public will voluntarily chose to purchase eco-books rather than traditional ones.






Resources:

Epublishers weekly. [2009.] Ebooks Save Millions of Trees: 10 Ideas For Sustainable Publsihing. [website]

Avaibale at:


Eco-Libris.[N/A.] Some facts about the book publishing industry. [website.]


TCK Publishing. [N/A.] Sustainable Reading and Publishing: How You Can Do Your Part to Help the Environment. [website.]


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©2025 by Megan Robinson.

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