QIP Award for Cambridge University Press

As printer and publisher of both the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006 and, for the past 15 years, the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which last year shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore – Cambridge University Press (CUP) has a responsibility to pay heed to the environmental impact of print.

“In climate science, we are probably the world’s leading publisher,” says CUP corporate affairs director Peter Davison, “so if we didn’t keep our own house in order, we’d look a bit silly. One of the first questions that was asked about the Stern Review was by a reporter from The Daily Telegraph, who wanted to know, ‘Was it printed on recycled paper?’ Fortunately the answer was yes.”

CUP is the oldest printer and publisher in the world, having been established more than four centuries ago, so it is fitting that environmental initiatives have been discussed and devised here for longer than in most other print operations. “We’re talking a seriously long time before it was fashionable,” Davison adds.

More recently, the company has had ISO 14001 certification – awarded by BSI – across the whole operation since July 2007; while the print side has both FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certificates. As a result, CUP has to consider the consumption of its operations from a holistic perspective, and from cradle to grave.

A succession of measures have been put in place to drive down energy consumption where possible, which include giving each press its own electricity supply, so no energy is consumed when the press is not in use; and designing individual compressors for each press that generate only the pressure that is necessary for a particular job. The latter saves around £26,000 a year, according to technical director David Royal, paying off the original investment in one to two years – the kind of investment that CUP is perhaps more willing to make as a not-for-profit entity than many commercial printers would be.

Nonetheless, says Royal, the continuous improvement of environmental performance required by ISO 14001 makes sense for the business as well as ecologically: “The need to improve goes hand in hand with the need to save money. A lot of the time, the objectives you set yourselves from an environmental point of view can actually save you money, as with the partnership we’ve set up with NoWatt. If we know where our electricity is going we can do something about reducing the cost.” His point rings especially true, speaking the day after British Gas announced a 35% increase in retail energy prices.

The partnership with NoWatt, an energy management company based in Manchester, aims to use electricity tracking technology to inform CUP in real time how and where energy is being used on site. It is part of an ongoing effort to minimise waste by recycling (aided by collections from J&G Environmental, 93.6% of waste has been recycled this year to date, Royal says) and by cutting it out at the outset – a strategy epitomised by the move towards ultra-short run and print on demand books.

“Waste reduction, or the avoidance of waste in the first place, is a huge part of what we have to do,” says Davison. “Our publishing catalogue has expanded from 12,000 to about 25,000 ISBNs over the last 10 years, so we’ve got twice the number of products deliverable as we had 10 years ago. Almost all of those additional products are delivered through an ultra-short run or print on demand solution.” This model, almost tailor-made for academic publishing, cuts down on warehousing as well as unnecessary production waste, and also makes it economic both to maintain production of rare titles and to revive books long out of print.

CUP’s efforts made it a clear winner of the QiP Environmental Publishing Award, and it probably will not be the last of its environmental accolades; especially if it can keep on running for another four centuries.

• www.cambridge.org