Green Publishing

Two major children’s book publishers, Scholastic and Simon & Schuster, are close to releasing their paper-use policies, which will significantly improve their impact on the environment.

They join Random House, Chronicle Books, and McGraw-Hill, which have already vowed to stop the use of endangered forests and maximize their use of recycled paper, says Tyson Miller, founder of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit organization that works with publishers and authors to protect the Earth.

More than 143 large and small U.S. publishers, 10 printers, and five paper companies have either signed the book industry’s Treatise on Responsible Paper or have environmental commitments in place with goals for increasing the use of recycled paper. Scholastic teamed up with the Rainforest Alliance last January to develop a formal, public paper procurement policy that would set clear objectives for the company.

“It’s a sign of broader shifts at large in the whole industry,” says Miller. “I’ve been talking about this stuff for years, but they 'get’ it now. It used to take ages for me to get a meeting with these big houses, but now they’re coming to me.”