Another day, another guest speaker. This time it was Meredith Walsh from Penguin Group UK's production department to talk to us about green print production.
I'll be honest, I hear green I expect self-righteous preachy environmentalist so I wasn't sure about this talk. But again I was pleasantly surprised. Meredith was really down to earth and managed to balance business and environmental issues in her talk. Her attitude seemed very much - this is how it is, fact. And you could see why.
In her role at Penguin, these environmental issues have just become another aspect that needs to be taken into account alongside timing and budget. The publishing sector is so reliant on the paper industry, which has been so affected
I'll be honest, I hear green I expect self-righteous preachy environmentalist so I wasn't sure about this talk. But again I was pleasantly surprised. Meredith was really down to earth and managed to balance business and environmental issues in her talk. Her attitude seemed very much - this is how it is, fact. And you could see why.
In her role at Penguin, these environmental issues have just become another aspect that needs to be taken into account alongside timing and budget. The publishing sector is so reliant on the paper industry, which has been so affected
by rising environmental concern, that eco-friendly business models aren't an optional extra anymore but a fundamental part of the industry and how it works.
This is because things that are bad for the environment have a knock on effect for the publishers themselves, as Meredith pointed out. Deforestation is eating into supplies of natural resources without making and attempt at sustaining them. But it's not just this that we have to worry about. The emissions from deforestation are contributing to climate change and global warming which in turn is causing bigger and more frequent natural disasters from floods, to droughts, to earthquakes. And these affect publishers. Meredith gave examples of how natural disasters around the world can disrupt the whole supply chain and those, like publishers, who rely on it. But it's not all doom and gloom as Meredith outlined how NGOs and publishers are working together to move away from unregulated deforestation to more sustainable and monitored forestry.
So yeah it was no surprise that there are a lot of environmental issues surrounding the production and use of paper, but what was interesting was when Meredith demonstrated that what seem like small decisions in design (like font size) can have large consequences in material consumption later down the line.
But the biggest surprise was that non-paper products aren't much better. Publishers can save paper by proofreading everything on screen but the storage of this data requires large servers and these require large amounts of energy. Similarly, while e-books don't use paper, the production of e-readers has a significant carbon footprint as well.
This talk gave us a lot to think about and made me realise that thinking green isn't just the responsibility of the production manager who buys the paper but needs to be implemented throughout the publishing process. Editors need to make sure they can justify the amount of pages they use and the large print runs, designers need to think about how their decisions affect extent and paper needed and of course production have to do their part checking the sources of the paper they use amongst other concerns like checking with the printers about their environmental responsibilities.
Ii will definitely be thinking more green as a result!
Meredith Walsh has co-authored a book on green issues in publishing with my lecturer Adrian Bullock and it will be out next near.
This is because things that are bad for the environment have a knock on effect for the publishers themselves, as Meredith pointed out. Deforestation is eating into supplies of natural resources without making and attempt at sustaining them. But it's not just this that we have to worry about. The emissions from deforestation are contributing to climate change and global warming which in turn is causing bigger and more frequent natural disasters from floods, to droughts, to earthquakes. And these affect publishers. Meredith gave examples of how natural disasters around the world can disrupt the whole supply chain and those, like publishers, who rely on it. But it's not all doom and gloom as Meredith outlined how NGOs and publishers are working together to move away from unregulated deforestation to more sustainable and monitored forestry.
So yeah it was no surprise that there are a lot of environmental issues surrounding the production and use of paper, but what was interesting was when Meredith demonstrated that what seem like small decisions in design (like font size) can have large consequences in material consumption later down the line.
But the biggest surprise was that non-paper products aren't much better. Publishers can save paper by proofreading everything on screen but the storage of this data requires large servers and these require large amounts of energy. Similarly, while e-books don't use paper, the production of e-readers has a significant carbon footprint as well.
This talk gave us a lot to think about and made me realise that thinking green isn't just the responsibility of the production manager who buys the paper but needs to be implemented throughout the publishing process. Editors need to make sure they can justify the amount of pages they use and the large print runs, designers need to think about how their decisions affect extent and paper needed and of course production have to do their part checking the sources of the paper they use amongst other concerns like checking with the printers about their environmental responsibilities.
Ii will definitely be thinking more green as a result!
Meredith Walsh has co-authored a book on green issues in publishing with my lecturer Adrian Bullock and it will be out next near.
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