18/09/2024
The APA recently released the results of our inaugural Sustainability Survey, alongside five recommendations for publishers to take action immediately. One of these recommendations was to:
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Nominate and appropriately resource a staff member or a team in your organisation to be responsible for sustainability
Thames & Hudson Australia recently established a six-person cross-departmental ‘green team’ to examine the company’s environmental impact and take action. Commercial director Justin Ractliffe leads the team, and shares what they’re doing at Thames & Hudson:
Approaching sustainability at Thames & Hudson
As a first step we are auditing our emissions and carbon footprint across our supply chain, production, and sales and marketing activity. A particular focus will be on our transportation and distribution, but we’re also looking at travel, our office, and the material, production and finishes on our books. We’ve already made some easy changes around the office, such as using 100% recycled copy paper and moving onto a 100% carbon neutral energy plan.
We had already made some changes and established the green team, but the APA’s sustainability survey and recommendations have been very helpful in framing our goals and developing an action plan.
We’re working towards setting targets on reducing our emissions, getting closer to carbon neutral, getting all paper, covers and casing sustainably sourced, and making our office as green as possible.
Illustrated books throw up particular challenges as they’re not cost effective to print locally and so there will always be a degree of shipping involved, but we’re working with freight companies to identify opportunities and initiatives; for example, Woodland who currently manage all our freight out of Asia have achieved a Gold Standard EcoVadis sustainability rating for the second consecutive year.
We also make books that are beautiful as objects and that entails some finishes – but we are meeting with our printers to discuss more sustainable embellishment options.
Develop your organisation’s sustainability practices
If you’d like to develop approaches to sustainable publishing like Thames & Hudson, browse the following resources as part of the Greener Publishing Guide:
You can also learn more about our sustainability survey and recommendations for publishers.