The Hunger Games and green reading

"The Hunger Games" had a record box office opening, taking in $155 million in U.S. ticket sales over the last weekend and setting up what promises to be one of the biggest film franchises of this decade. The movie is based on the book The Hunger Games, the first novel in the Hunger Games trilogy written by Susan Collins.

The success of the movie helps boost the sales of the trilogy and Scholastic, the publisher of the Hunger Games Trilogy announced on Wednesday that there were 36.5 million copies of the bestselling trilogy in print, a 55 percent jump from the 23.5 million copies in print at the start of 2012.

Why I'm telling you all of this? Because I believe The Hunger Games phenomenon provides some important and valuable lessons for everyone who is interested in making books greener.

Let's start with a fact: According to Lisa Serra, Director of Paper Procurement at Scholastic, the hardcover copies of the three books in the series (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay) are printed on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Chain of Custody-certified text stock containing 20 percent post-consumer fiber (source: Joshua Martin, Environmental Paper Network Director).

Now, let's move on to three assumptions:

1. If you are interested in reading one of the Hunger Games, most chances are that you don't find it too important what paper it is printed on - you won't look for another book if you will find out the trilogy is printed on 100 percent virgin paper, just like you won't buy it only because it's printed on 20 percent FSC-certified paper or even if it's 100 percent recycled paper. In other words: The sustainability level of the paper will not be a factor in your decision. Most chances are that you probably won't even think about it.

2. Those readers who will be concerned with the issue of the paper might consider reading the Hunger Games electronic version - the e-book costs just like the paperback ($5) and no paper is used at all. Couldn't it get any greener than that?

3. Scholastic probably knows that the fact it is using 20 percent FSC-certified paper doesn't really make a difference for the majority of readers. Most of them probably are not even aware to the fact that Scholastic is making this effort, or to the fact that after making significant progress toward its original targets for 2012, Scholastic decided to increase its 2012 goal from 30% FSC-certified paper to 35%.

As we already know a book is a unique product - it's not like toothpaste or a cleaning product where customers can switch to a competing product that is more sustainable and provide them a better value. If they want a certain book, they will just get it and there's no better example right now than the Hunger Games. Just think about yourself - would you avoid purchasing the Hunger Games just because it's printed on 80 percent virgin paper? Probably not.

You might be considering reading it on an e-reader or even going to the library to get a copy or e-copy of the book, but you certainly won't give it up for 'green' reasons per se.

So what lessons can we learn from the example of the Hunger Games and what actions can we take to apply them?

1. Readers will not be the drivers of change when it comes to printing books on a more sustainable paper (i.e. FSC-certified or recycled paper). Nevertheless, it is important to keep educating them about the impacts of paper, so even if it won't be a substantial factor in their decision making, they will still be aware of it.

2. Readers are moving to e-reading and many of them believe it is also a greener alternative since no paper is involved. It is important to make sure readers will know it's not always the case and be aware that e-reading also has its own footprint. It's also important to encourage readers to demand companies like Amazon to disclose the environmental impacts of the e-readers they sell.

3. Although readers might not be a major driver for change, publishers should make efforts to inform them on their efforts to green up their operations, especially when there is what to report on. Scholastic, for example, should try to make sure every reader of the Hunger Games in its paper version would know that the book is printed using 20 percent FSC-certified paper.

4. Publishers should think of their efforts to make their books more sustainable in terms of stakeholder engagement. Right now it looks like their best shot to generate both tangible and intangible rewards out of these efforts. Just think about the RAN campaign against publishers printing on linked to Indonesian rainforest destruction (Scholastic by the way was among RAN's recommended publishers) or the trouble Gibson Guitars got into when they were accused in violating the Lacey Act, and you can see how stakeholder engagement provide a great monetary incentive to shift to FSC-certified any recycled paper.

5. We still don't have the best answers to the question how to make reading more sustainable - technology provides hope and stakeholder engagement provide incentives, but it's still not enough to drive a change fast enough. Trees are still been cut in an unsustainable way and we know it can be avoided. We just need to keep figuring out how. Any ideas?

Please feel free to share add your comments and thoughts!

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

How book companies performed on the Greenpeace Boreal Marketplace Review?

Greenpeace published last week its 2010 Boreal Marketplace Performance Review. This study evaluates 23 companies using use forest products from the Boreal Forest on their commitments and concrete actions to protect the Boreal Forest and the endangered woodland caribou.

The review lists 23 companies in four performance categories. The eight criteria that were used to evaluate the performance of these customers were: action on protecting endangered forests, recycling, recycled content and reduction, preference and targets for the uptake of FSC fibre, leadership and advocacy on conservation issues and Boreal Forest protection, labeling and marketing of green products, supplier engagement, communication with conservation organizations and "greenwashing”.

Among the 23 companies there were 5 companies from the book industry, so let's see how they did on this evaluation:

In the top performance category (True Leaders) you can find Indigo Books. In the second best performance category (Positively engaged) you can find Scholastic. The third category (Some small steps) includes Pearson/Penguin and Simon & Schuster and the last performing category (Failing Our Forests) includes Harlequin.

The report doesn't include the companies' performance in each of the 8 categories, but includes some bits of information about some of them:

Other companies such as Simon & Schuster, Pearson/Penguin Books, Capital One, Scholastic and BMR Le Groupe have developed purchasing policies or are in the process of doing so. This is a commitment that Greenpeace supports, so long as the policy contains strong language, clear targets and specific timelines. Lowes, Time Inc. and Transcontinental have also started to engaged directly with their suppliers in relation to their supply, FSC certification, high conservation value forests and caribou habitat.

Several companies are making important strides in this area, and have made efforts to maintain communication with Greenpeace. Unfortunately, other companies have continually ignored our requests for information or had an initial meeting and then stopped communicating. Best Buy, Toys R Us, Harlequin, Xerox, and Boise Cascade are all companies that have NOT been communicative.

There are no details about the Indigo Books, which is the only one of this book list ranked in the top category of True Leaders, but you can learn more on their commitment and their performance (including their support of our Green Books Campaign) on Indigo's environment page.

The full report is available at http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/global/canada/report/2010/12/company-ranking-2010.pdf

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!

The green agenda of the Green Books Campaign's publishers - part 2: Scholastic

We're continuing today to present you with some of the publishers that participate in the Green Books Campaign and their thoughts on why it's important that books will be printed in an eco-friendly manner.

Our guest today is Scholastic.

Scholastic is the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books and a leader in educational technology and related services and children’s media. Scholastic is participating in the campaign with Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen (Printed on 100% recovered fiber of which 50% is post-consumer waste). The book will be reviewed on OurWhiskeyLullaby.

And now to the questionnaire (all publishers were asked to reply the same four questions):

Why do you believe books should be printed on eco-friendly paper?
As a publisher of children’s books, we believe it is our responsibly to the children to ensure that the virgin paper fiber used in our books is sustainably harvested and does not come from areas of social conflict. We also believe that by using recycled paper we are keeping paper out of landfills and helping to reduce the green house gas emissions which result from land-filled paper. Our practices reinforce Scholastic’s commitment to educate and care for children and ensure a safe environment where they can grow and learn.

What is your policy on using eco-friendly paper?
We have a strong environmental paper procurement policy (http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/paperprocurement.htm) which includes the following 2012 goals:

- 30% of our publication paper to be Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain-of-custody certified. We are currently at 17.3%

- 25% of our fiber to be recovered (75% of that to be PCW). We are currently at 19.8%

- Balance of fiber to be free of unacceptable sources of fiber as described by the FSC controlled wood standard

Are there other ways you're going green?
We have reduced our packaging. We have reduced our direct mail book club kit mailings and we use recycled copy paper and have an in house recycling programs

Scholastic also tells our environmental story through the books we publish. Award-winning titles like The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming (winner, 2008 Green Earth Award), You Can Save the Planet: 50 Ways You Can Make a Difference, The Magic School Bus and the Climate Change, and a series based on the BBC’s Planet Earth television program demonstrate Scholastic’s commitment to educating kids about the environment

We also involve kids in a philanthropic approach to acting green. Working with the Rainforest Alliance’s Adopt-A-Rainforest program, Scholastic Book Clubs asked kids in classrooms around the country to read 100 books in order to preserve 100 acres of rainforest. There is now a protected area in Ecuador known as the Scholastic Book Clubs ClassroomsCare Reserve.

What's your advice to readers that would like to make their book purchasing more sustainable?
Do your research and purchase books from companies that have a strong environmental procurement policy.

Thank you Scholastic for your work and your participation in the Green Books Campaign!

The Campaign's page is http://www.ecolibris.net/greenbookscampaign2010.asp .You can also follow the campaign on Facebook and twitter.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Scholastic make an impressive progress to meet their sustainable paper procurement goals

Good new from Scholastic - the global children's publishing, education and media company announced that significant progress has been made toward the company-wide sustainable goals!

Scholastic announced in January 2008 the following goals for 2012: to increase its purchase of FSC-certified paper for its publications to 30% and its use of recycled paper to 25%, of which 75% would be post-consumer waste.

Their progress toward these goals is impressive as you can learn from the data detailed on their press release (and thanks to Environmental Leader for the link):

FSC-certified paper (goal: 30% of all paper purchasing)

In 2008, Scholastic purchased 89,378 tons of paper of which 17,608 tons, or 19.7%, was FSC-certified, up from 4% in 2007.

Recycled paper (goal: 25%, of which 75% would be post-consumer waste)

In 2008 13,496 tons, or 15.1%, of the paper purchased was produced from recovered fiber, up from 13% in 2007, and of that amount, 11,258 tons, or 83%, was produced from PCW fiber, up from 77% in 2007.

In other words they're already made two thirds of the way toward their goal and have 3 years to do the remaining third. In other words, they can reach it earlier if they'll continue to move forward so rapidly.

Corey Brinkema, President of FSC-US is quoted in the press release saying "Last year Scholastic made an industry-leading commitment to forest stewardship with its goals for sourcing FSC-certified and recycled paper". Is Scholastic's goals can be considered "an industry-leading commitment"? well, the answer is actually Yes.

Scholastic's mean that more of half of the paper they will use in 2012 will come from sustainable resources (FSC-certified or recycled paper). This is more ambitious than the commitments of other big publishers such as Random House or Simon & Schuster (see more details on their commitments on our book publishing page).

Scholastic's commitment is also similar to the one defined by the Green Press Initiative on their Industry Treatise, which was signed so far by 180 publishers, merchants and mills and include among others the following goals:

• Shifting the book industry's collective average use of recycled fiber from an estimated 5% recycled average at present to a 30% recycled industry average by 2012 (a majority to be postconsumer).
• Shifting to book industry’s collective average use of paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or equivalent certification system to 20% by 2012.

The only piece of data missing is how much carbon emissions have Scholastic manage to reduce so far. They don't have a goal in terms of carbon reductions but I'm wondering if following the announcement of the Book Industry Environmental Council last April on goals for cutting the U.S. book industry's greenhouse gas emissions in 20% by 2020 (from a 2006 baseline) with the intent of achieving an 80% reduction by 2050, Scholastic will add it to their set of goals. In all, it looks like they're in a good position to meet and even exceed this goal.

So kudos to Scholastic for their ongoing efforts and achiements and we hope to see many more of the big publishers following suit.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

World's largest publisher of children's books goes green

While we were concentrating last week on green mooching, Scholastic, the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, announced new steps it intends to take to go green.

I learned about the announcement from Greenbiz.com and went to check the source itself. Scholastic reported in a news release on its new green policy that is meant to "further strengthening its sustainable paper procurement practices".

Scholastic's policy is based on a five-year goal to increase its publication paper purchase of FSC-certified paper to 30% and its use of recycled paper to 25%, of which 75% will be post-consumer waste.

Scholastic worked together with the Rainforest Alliance, the Green Press Initiative and other environmental organizations to set these goals, which Scholastic says are "industry-leading goals".
Are they?

I wasn't sure so I sat down and made a comparison with two other green initiatives of big publishers (Random House and Simon & Schuster) and the Book Industry Treatise initiated by the Green Press Initiative. I checked out the two most important parts in these initiatives - usage of recycled paper and FSC paper. I also checked to what year they set their goals.

And here are the results:

As you can see from the table above, although Scholastic is the last one to set up green goals, it set up very bold goals in comparison with the others. None of the other three match Scholastic when it comes to the usage of FSC paper, and it lags only in 5% behind the treatise and Random House with regards to the usage of recycled paper.

Still, I must say that if they would have gone for a goal of 30% recycled paper content on 2012, it would be much easier to agree that their goals are industry leading ones. You have to remember that recycled paper is a better alternative to virgin paper than FSC paper and therefore more important as a goal.

One more point I would like to emphasize is that unlike the treatise and S&S, there's no commitment of Scholastic to stop using paper that may contain fiber from endangered and old-growth forest areas.

All in all, I think this is a very important step and I believe that the way Scholastic has done in the last couple of years represents the whole book industry.

Although it used recycled paper for many of its books in the past, Scholastic drew fire from some environmental groups in 2005 when it published Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in the Harry Potter series. Greenpeace, in particular, complained Scholastic wasn’t using enough recycled paper and urged consumers to boycott Scholastic and to purchase the novel from Raincoast Books, the Canadian publisher, which printed the Canadian edition of the book on recycled paper.

In 2007, things changed and Scholastic worked together with the Rainforest Alliance to green up the final part of Harry Potter: every 784-page copy of Harry's final adventure contained at least 30% recycled fiber. On top of that, almost two-thirds of the 15,100 tones of paper used were certified sustainable (FSC). There were also 100,000 copies of the "deluxe edition" which were only made from recycled paper, with the factory powered from renewable sources.

And now Scholastic is taking one more important step forward and set a policy for all of its operations. This is definitely the way we think all publishers should go and of course we hope to see bolder goals in the future that will make reading truly sustainable.

Oh, and I almost forgot this part, which is also very important: "Along with the new policy announcement, Scholastic today launched its new, interactive “green” website for kids called Scholastic ACT GREEN! at www.scholastic.com/actgreen." The site is designed to educate kids about climate change and sustainability and inspire them to take action to preserve the planet. Way to go!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!