The green way is the Reed way

When your publications disseminate the latest scientific work on climate change and the environment around the world, there’s no excuse for not having a serious green policy, as Reed Elsevier’s Mark Gough explains.

Reed Elsevier publishes about 25% of the world’s peer-reviewed academic work, including a journal by the name of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control; its exhibitions arm runs the Pollutec conference on environmental challenges; Reed Business Information publishes New Scientist magazine.

It’s no wonder therefore that Mark Gough, the environment and health & safety co-ordinator for the Reed Elsevier Group, can talk about the organisation’s biggest environmental impact being through “brain print” – the information its various organs provide to the concerned community at large. Such responsibility can even affect the publisher’s editorial policy.

“We are a professional information provider and we think it’s important to put this agenda out there, but we also have to be balanced,” says Gough. “Our editors have complete editorial freedom, but they are choosing to write about the environment. It would be hypocritical if we did not follow what we have published.

“A good example is carbon offsetting by planting trees. Some of our divisions have offset carbon emissions through tree planting in the past, but we’ve published some research on this showing that it’s not as clear-cut as people thought to offset in this way, and that research is now informing our debate about future investment.”

A green ethos pervades Reed Elsevier’s operations across the globe. Every key location has a green team to implement environmental policy and to generate ideas themselves on improvements. Reed is working towards ISO 14001 certification, through a phased approach of first attaining the British BS8555 standard, and rolling this out. “That said, our environmental management system is based on ISO 14001, it does everything ISO says it should, and covers all locations globally,” Gough points out.

Reed is working towards targets on reducing energy and water consumption, waste and carbon use – currently, for example, 39% of UK waste is recycled, and the target for 2009 is 50%. Suppliers such as printers have to sign up to a code of conduct, which is based on the UN’s Global Compact for human rights, labour and the environment. Suppliers are audited, ranked by environmental and other risks and assisted with remediation to address problems.

Gough reports that this year has seen the first drop in paper usage for Reed Elsevier, as more titles graduate online (paper usage is at about 140,000 tonnes annually). Currently 81% of the paper is certified in some way. The Group was also a founder member of PREPS, an initiative launched at the London Book Fair this year, to establish a database of physical and environmental information on paper stocks used, graded to assist in buying decisions. There are now 13 member publishers and all are welcome, says Simon Thresh of Acona, the corporate responsibility consultancy that manages the database.

The move of journals onto an online-only publishing model does not necessarily mean Reed’s carbon footprint will improve however. Reed is studying this issue, through a trial with a journal called Fuel. Gough explains: “As we move online are we going to be creating more or less of an impact? Everyone assumes it will be less, but with print you produce the journal and there are no more carbon emissions as people use it; with a website people continually use electricity to access it. “We can track how it is accessed, how long people spend on it, and how much of it they print. It will be an interesting study and we’ll have the data by September. Then we have to crunch the numbers, decide what those results say and where we can make carbon savings.”

Reed Elsevier’s group-wide environmental policy does not prevent more local initiatives being implemented. Monica Baghi, senior account manager at Reed Business Information in Surrey has been working on the introduction of oxo-biodegradable polywrap for RBI’s magazine titles, and a move also onto 10 micron poly from 17 micron. Oxo-biodegradable polywrap breaks down naturally in 12 to 18 months, says Baghi, and when it does, it feeds positive nutrients into the compost. After a trial, RBI’s sheetfed magazines moved onto the new, thinner polywrap at the end of June. The web offset printed titles are currently also moving across.

“At the moment the web printer finds it a bit slow running and it needs higher temperatures to seal the magazine in the polywrap – it’s just a question of getting used to the properties of the poly,” says Baghi. “Ten micron is quite an achievement though.”