According to the Green Press Initiative, more than 30 million trees are used each year to make books sold in the US, a number still small compared to newsprint, which consumed more than 95 million. The greenhouse gas emissions and impact on endangered forests caused by the publishing industry are equally startling.
The Green Press Initiative was founded in 2001 with the goal to change an American publishing industry that publishes and sells and more books every year. For publishers this means primarily to sign on to the Book Industry Treatise on Environmentally Responsible Publishing. The document is an industry-originated set of goals and values individual publishers can get behind; steps like supporting and industry-wide greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 20 percent by 2020, and increasing the industry’s use of recycled fibers from the current five percent to 30 by that same year.Treatises, however, easily find support when there is no enforcement and the document itself is produced by the industry it’s designed to change. Still, the Green Press Initiative has claimed clear successes since they got started. GPI advocacy has brought over 180 American publishers to develop environmental paper policies, creating a six-fold increase in the recycled paper it uses annually. That’s just where their successes start.
They make clear it’s not just book publishers who can and should make a difference in the industry. At the GPI homepage, the “action steps” toolbar shows how everybody in the industry, from authors to publishers to consumers, can help make a difference with clear plans for action. Just one more way all of us can put a better future in our own hands and run with it.
