The Silent Hero
While companies who have launched environmental policies certainly deserve the spotlight, no story on environmental change in the industry would be complete without significant mention of the Green Press Initiative (GPI). GPI is sort of the silent hero behind much of the change that is taking place around us. The nonprofit organization, led by executive director Tyson Miller, has invested nearly six years, 15,000 hours and a lot of dollars in improving the book industry’s environmental impact, and has catalyzed meaningful environmental policies from nearly 40 percent of the market share. GPI was instrumental in moving the industry’s “Treatise on Responsible Paper Use” to completion, and getting signatories, and it is behind (with cooperation from the Book Industry Study Group) the first-ever environmental benchmarking survey for the industry. GPI’s efforts, all told, have no small impact on our planet. I can say with quite a degree of certainty that this industry would not be where it is with regard to minimizing its environmental impact without GPI’s involvement.