Potholes on the Road to Recycled
Committing to recycled paper is not an easy decision for a publisher. Here at New World Library, a 25-year-old publishing company known for books by personal growth pioneers Shakti Gawain (Creative Visualization), Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now), and Deepak Chopra (Seven Spiritual Laws of Success), it's been an incremental process. But each step forward has resulted in a more Earth-friendly product.
Committing to use recycled paper was the first step. We became a member of the Green Press Initiative (GPI), a non-profit environmental advocacy group, to take advantage of their information, contacts, and planning assistance for converting to recycled and environmentally friendly publishing.
GPI's planning templates in particular have helped us define our goals, and manage our progress. Following their published recommendations, we aim to print all of our titles on 30% to 100% post-consumer recycled paper by 2007.
And this season, we chose to print our lead title, Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle, using 100% recycled, 100% post-consumer waste paper. It's a company first.
The corporate decision to use recycled paper is only the first hurdle a publisher must overcome. Price is the next. In the past, the high cost of 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper made it impractical for independent publishers to use.
That's changed. With the first 150,000-copy print run of our lead title this season, recycled paper cost us only nine cents per unit more than virgin paper.
When considering this slightly increased cost, it's important to also consider the environmental savings. Our first print run saved 983 fully grown trees, 400,000 gallons of water, and 617 million BTUs of energy.
It also avoided producing more than 47,000 pounds of solid waste, and 92,000 pounds of greenhouse gases, according to estimates calculated by New Leaf Paper in San Francisco, a recycled paper vendor.
