Tyson Miller

Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.

Mount Pleasant, S.C.-based Arcadia Publishing, a publisher of local history books, is the country’s first major book publisher to achieve the use of 100-percent Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified paper across its entire book publishing program, the company announced this week.

Nonprofit advocacy organization Green Press Initiative (GPI) announced that the U.S. book industry has passed "a meaningful environmental threshold." Approximately 50 percent of publishers now have environmental commitments in place—most with goals and timelines for vastly improving their environmental and climate performance. "This is significant due to the fact that as recent as 2001, virtually no publishers had environmental commitments on record …," according to a GPI press release. 

Today, the U.S. book industry passed a meaningful environmental threshold—approximately 50 percent of publishers now have environmental commitments in place–most with goals and timelines for vastly improving their environmental and climate performance

When Shona Burns first entered college, she was unsure of what she wanted to study. “I started out doing a business studies degree,” she recalls. “I was bored rigid. … I had met a couple of fellow students who were getting a publishing degree and found what they were talking about a lot more interesting than what I was doing myself.”

Regarding the book manufacturing industry’s commitment to “green” principles, it could be said that a page has truly turned. Over the past decade, consideration of climate impacts and paper sourcing has become central to the industry’s approach, and, along the way, many manufacturers have discovered ways to balance the need to economize, invest in infrastructure and reduce environmental impacts—often through innovative policies and practices that manage to do all three.

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