The ‘Green’ TEAM

“Recycling is something we always did,” notes Francine Colaneri, vice president of manufacturing and purchasing at Scholastic. “The difference here was [that] our goal was a goal that would be challenging for us, that would enable us to bring products that are better than what was being done in the past, to satisfy our stakeholders and challenge the mills.”

The company hopes to facilitate industrywide change by encouraging stakeholders up and down the supply chain to use environmentally sound products and practices, which will, in turn, drive down prices and allow more publishers to participate.

“We have also done things from a product perspective,” Colaneri adds. “We worked with one of our mills to develop lightweight paper, reducing basis weight. We really think the ‘reduce’ side [of the conservation equation] is most important.”

Aside from manufacturing improvements, Scholastic has striven to cut energy costs in other ways, including an under-floor heating and cooling system, and efficient lighting at the company’s headquarters.

Scholastic is the latest in an increasingly long line of publishers making a commitment to “green” principles. The “early adopters,” according to the GPI, include Lantern Books (which prints nearly all titles on 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper and was the first publisher to publicly develop a policy); Baker Publishing Group (which in 2003 began the process of implementing a 30-percent post-consumer recycled fiber policy that was fully in place by 2006); and Harvard University Press (which currently has 30 percent of its titles printed with 30-percent to 50-percent post-consumer grade).

A major development for the industry came with Random House’s announcement of a comprehensive policy in May 2006. Working with the GPI, the world’s largest trade publisher became, in Miller’s words, a “catalyst” for the industry by committing to a tenfold increase in the company’s use of recycled uncoated paper by 2010, from 3 percent to 30 percent.