Random House, Lantern Books Among ‘SustainPrint.com Leadership Award’ Winners for Environmental Sustainability Efforts

Newcomers of the Year
Random House, Inc. received the “Newcomer of the Year” award in book publishing in recognition of the company’s significant paper policy change announced in May 2006, which commits to a ten-fold aggregate increase in recycled fiber tonnage, within four years. This commitment means that over the course of the next four years a minimum of 30 percent of the uncoated paper Random House uses to print the majority of its U.S. titles will be derived from recycled papers. The policy change also reflects a significant upgrade from its previous baseline of three percent. Random House’s policy marks the first significant paper policy with goals and benchmarks to be developed by a multinational trade book publishing company. When fully realized, will represent an annual savings of more than 550,000 trees each year, an amount that would fill twenty of New York City’s Central Parks.

“It is a great motivator for Random House to be recognized with this leadership award from SustainPrint.com. We are proud to be in the vanguard among eco-aware book publishers and we will work very assiduously with our Random House colleagues, our suppliers, and our industry to continue to be worthy of this honor of leadership,” said Andrew Van Der Laan, director of production planning.

Fast Company magazine was awarded “Newcomer of the Year” in magazine publishing for its recent switch to entirely recycled paper. In fact, this FSC-certified paper is 80-percent post-consumer recycled in addition to being processed chlorine-free (PCF), meaning that no chlorine or chlorine compounds were used to “bleach” or “whiten” the paper. This is significant because when chlorine compounds combine with other organic material, they can produce dioxin, a known human carcinogen.

Longtime Leaders
Lantern Books received the book award as a “Longtime Leader.” Lantern was among the first book publishers to develop a meaningful environmentally friendly paper policy six years ago and since then has printed most of its books on 100-percent recycled paper. The company has also worked to support the development of new paper grades for the market and to engage printers in new stocking programs that have also had benefits for other publishers. Lantern also helped craft the Book Industry Treatise on Responsible Paper Use and currently serves on the Treatise Leadership Council.