MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
April 24 – May 1, 2008 Edition
Random House
Green Initiatives
Show Progress
NEW YORK, NY/4/21/08–Random House, Inc. this week said it has made substantial progress in reducing the company’s environmental impact, according to its first-year environmental study. Collaborating with Corporate Service, Publishing Operations and other divisions, the company said its environmental committee is identifying and implementing "meaningful companywide green initiatives and partnering with organizations that can help achieve the goal of reducing its carbon footprint." The focus for the past twelve months has been on paper and energy consumption at its various facilities, as well as on efforts to recycle.
"Our two-year-old ENVIRONMENTAL PAPER INITIATIVE is most significant of all initiatives because the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our domestic paper usage alone are more than seven times those from all of our other business activities combined," a company statement said.
In May 2006, Random House, Inc. became the first major U.S. trade book publisher to adopt an environmental paper policy. We established multiyear incremental targets for recycled fiber content use, beginning with 10 percent in 2007 and increasing to 30 percent by 2010. The company also set standards for the virgin fiber used in its books.
During 2007, 6 percent of the fiber in book paper came from recycled sources, which exceeded the 2008 goal of 15 percent.
Because of Random House’s move to recycled fiber, in 2007 the company saved:
309,058 trees worth of timber. Enough purchased energy to power 1,476 homes for a year. 50 swimming pools full of waste water. 454 garbage truck loads of solid waste.
And prevented greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those generated by 2,970 cars in a year. A company release said: "Random House, Inc. is committed to minimizing our emissions companywide from energy consumption. We are doing it in two ways:by reducing the amount of energy we use and by sourcing clean renewable energy.
Random House is also the first book publisher to join the EPA Climate Leaders program. Climate Leaders is an Environmental Protection Agency industry-government partnership that works with companies to develop comprehensive climate change strategies. Partner companies commit to reducing their impact on the global environment by completing a corporate-wide inventory of their greenhouse gas emissions based on a quality management system, setting aggressive reduction goals, and annually reporting their progress to EPA. More information about the program and participating corporations can be found at http://www.epa.gov/stateply/ .
AMONG the company’s priorities for 2008 is replacing hard-copy sales materials (manuscripts, galleys, reading notebooks) with electronic versions that can be downloaded to sales and editorial employees..
