Penguin Random House | Munich, 05/24/2023

‘2,300 Tons Of Paper Saved Per Year’

Books are an expression of a vibrant culture in a liberal, democratic, and diverse society. They can serve as a repository of knowledge, information and stories across many generations. With this alone, they fulfill important sustainability criteria, and besides, they are also largely made from renewable raw materials. Nevertheless, resources and energy are needed to produce them and make them available to readers. Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe in Germany has set ambitious climate protection goals for itself and committed to greater sustainability across all work processes. In our interview, Barbara Scheuer, the publishing group’s Overall Production Manager and Environmental Officer, and Mariam En Nazer, Production and Sustainability Manager, talk about this challenge.

Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe has defined its climate protection targets for 2030. What are they specifically?

Barbara Scheuer: As a Bertelsmann company, we have set ourselves the goal of climate neutrality by 2030. But a completely carbon-free production of books is unrealistic. Instead, the aim is to save as much CO2 as possible so that we have to offset as little as possible.

Where does Verlagsgruppe currently stand in terms of CO2 savings?

Barbara Scheuer: By the end of last year, we had managed to reduce our CO2 emissions per ton of books produced by twelve percent compared to 2018. However, sustainable book production shouldn’t focus solely on CO2 emissions. We are one of the signatories of the “Healthy Printing Charter,” which commits us to selecting ingredients and materials for our title production in such a way that they can be returned to the cycle and reused wherever possible. Last year, we also signed the United Nations “SDG Publishers Compact.” This commits us to developing sustainable bookmaking practices and acting as a champion of the SDGs (“Sustainable Development Goals”) in the action period up to 2030.

How will these objectives be achieved?

Barbara Scheuer: We have for years been checking every step in our book production process, from materials procurement to the finished book, with a view to making bookmaking as resource- and energy-efficient as possible. To achieve this, we are in continuous exchange with our partners, the paper mills, the printers, and the companies that handle the logistics.

Mariam En Nazer: We scrutinize all our work processes. Of key importance here are the suitable analysis tools that we develop. We are already able to determine the carbon emissions of every book we produce. We have even had this scientifically certified by an independent body. Our program colleagues will soon be able to use software to determine the specific impact of their circulation or layout decisions on a title’s carbon footprint. We also want to know how much CO2 we currently emit and the amount of energy and resources we or our contractors consume. We make the energy consumption of our publishing building just as transparent as the emissions caused by commuting and home offices..

Let’s stay briefly with the day-to-day running of the publishing house and the daily processes in the publishing building. What has been accomplished here in terms of sustainability?

Barbara Scheuer: Our publishing building has been completely climate-neutral since 2019 and has been awarded silver certification by the German Sustainable Building Council. We promote the environmentally friendly mobility concept “Deutschlandticket Job” for our employees and also offer job bicycles. We are continuously converting to a digital way of working and make sure our work is as paperless and material-saving as possible. Our flexible working models with work-from-home options for all employees cut down on CO2 and, besides offering personal flexibility, also help ease the burden on commuter traffic.

Where does Verlagsgruppe stand overall in terms of climate-neutral book production?

Mariam En Nazer: Since 2018, the titles published by the Ludwig and Gütersloher Verlagshaus imprints have been climate-neutralized, which means that in addition to reducing CO2 emissions, we also make carbon offset payments. In 2020, our children’s book publishers followed suit, and a year later all titles published by the Penguin/Blanvalet division. In 2022, we were able to produce more than 40 percent of our titles climate-neutrally.

What are the biggest drivers for reducing CO2 emissions?

Barbara Scheuer: Production and material procurement as well as transport and logistics require the most resources and cause the most CO2 emissions. Accordingly, this is where the greatest savings potential lies. Let’s take a look at the paper we use for our books: When calculating its environmental footprint, the location of the factory, the origin of the raw materials for the paper, and how much renewable energy was used are all crucial. We source everything from Europe. Our most important partner companies are from Scandinavia and have been pioneers in sustainable tree management and paper production for years. Since 2009, we have used only FSC-certified paper from sustainable forests. The entire process – from forest to printed book – is subject to strict environmental standards that are constantly being developed and monitored.

Does that mean you give this paper preference over recycled paper?

Mariam En Nazer: Not as a rule, but for the most part, yes. Our analyses have shown that although less raw material is needed to produce recycled paper, in many cases more fossil energy is required. So much so, in fact, that Scandinavian paper from sustainable forestry has a better overall score. However, this assessment is not set in stone, because we regularly recalculate the CO2 values of the papers we use. Here, we are in permanent exchange with our partners in the paper industry and keep reviewing alternative materials and forms of production that are available in the market.

Shrink-wrapped books with price stickers keep coming up in the debate. What is your position on this?

Mariam En Nazer: Shrink-wrapping is not really an issue for us anymore. We only have to shrink-wrap heavy and high-priced books or those with sensitive surface materials to prevent damage during storage and transport. But we’re talking about roughly five percent of our annual production here. A damaged book is unsellable and has to be disposed of. This has a much worse impact on the environment than polyethylene film, which is 100 percent recyclable. Our stickers and labels are made exclusively of paper and can be removed without leaving any residue.

What other CO2 savings potentials exist?

Barbara Scheuer: Our books literally carry weight. On average, the page count of our new publications remains roughly the same. But if we manage to lighten our books by just a few grams while maintaining the same size and haptic quality, this has a significant impact on our sustainability scoresheet, because less material has to be used, and then moved around later. Compared to 2021, we have been able to reduce the average weight of a book page by around ten percent. At a rough estimate, around 23,000 tons of paper are transported within Europe for our books. This means that, in purely arithmetical terms, we needed to produce about 2,300 tons of paper less last year and move it from A to B. This is a significant reduction.

Mariam En Nazer: Which brings us to the topic of transport and logistics. We always keep an eye on how many kilometers a book block covers before it reaches the retailer as a finished book. And wherever possible, we use rail transport. Intelligent planning and logistics can save many more tons of CO2.

All publishers are familiar with the situation of having either too many or too few copies of a title in stock. What does print run planning have to do with sustainability?

Barbara Scheuer: Demand-driven print run management is another very important factor in noticeably reducing emissions. After all, every unsold book that has to be destroyed at some point unnecessarily consumes resources and energy. This is where data technology and digitization help us to make smarter and more sustainable print run decisions. The more precisely we forecast volume needs, the less risk there is of overproduction and thus “wasted emissions.” We are only at the beginning here, but this will be an important factor in the future.

The “Cradle2Cradle” process is considered the most ecologically compatible method of producing goods. How does Cradle2Cradle work in book production? And how do we put it into practice?

Mariam En Nazer: Barbara already mentioned it earlier: Sustainable book production shouldn’t focus just on climate neutrality. Cradle2Cradle is about circularity, or the circular economy. We have already produced a whole series of our titles in this way. This process is independently certified. Everything is designed so that the product can be returned to biological or technical cycles at the end of its life cycle. The materials are tested by environmental institutes for their environmental and health compatibility and are completely recyclable or compostable. Together with our printing partner GGP Media, we can now also have even large print runs produced in this way. Unfortunately, the costs of producing books according to the Cradle2Cradle principle are still higher than those of conventional methods. Nevertheless, we will successively expand this form of circularity, because it is definitively the production principle of the future. (Markus Desaga)