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Environmental Commitment

About Us / Environmental Commitment

At McClelland & Stewart we are committed to minimizing our carbon footprint and environmental impact, a value that informs the production choices we make, the way we run our office, and the kinds of books we publish. Here’s what we’ve been up to ­on that front -- and where we’re heading.


History

In 2001, when we published Alice Munro’s collection of short stories Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, she challenged us to produce the book using eco-friendly paper. Few publishers were doing it at the time, so the paper was expensive and hard to find. But we managed to make it happen, and since then we’ve committed to making ancient-forest-friendly paper our standard, even if it means paying premium prices. We believe that the more publishers commit to doing so, the more available and affordable these papers will become.

Further to this, in November 2008, a group of McClelland & Stewart employees got together to form a green committee. We are now looking at all of the many ways we can continue to green our business practices, both in how we run the office on a daily basis and in the bigger picture of how we produce and ship our books, as well as how we market, sell, and publicize them. Working closely with our authors, our suppliers, and our accounts, we believe that McClelland & Stewart will rise above the challenges we all face, and we will continue to be an industry leader in environmental publishing. (Having said that, we don’t like to be too self-congratulatory, because there is always more we can be doing.)


Anatomy of a green book

Paper is one of the most obvious places a book publisher can make a difference. McClelland & Stewart is currently printing about 75% of its books on 100% recycled paper (most with 100% post-consumer waste), and over 90% contain paper with at least 20% recycled content.

In the fall of 2009, when we published Ray Anderson’s Confessions of a Radical Industrialist and Colin Beavan’s No Impact Man, we decided to push things further. We aimed for sustainability in all aspects of the books’ production. With Ray Anderson’s, for example:

  • The paper was 100% recycled made from 100% post-consumer waste, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and ancient-forest-friendly.
  • The book had a trim size of 6 1/4 x 9 in order to maximize paper roll-size efficiency, creating zero fore-edge trimming waste.
  • We used soy-based inks, which are more biodegradable than standard petroleum-based inks.
  • We chose to dispense with the dust jacket, instead wrapping the boards – also made from 100% recycled materials – with 100% recycled stock that is FSC-certified and ancient-forest friendly.
  •  Instead of using petroleum-based plastic laminate on the cover, we opted for a varnish, which is recyclable.
  • The book was held together with three different kinds of glue, one of which is fully biodegradable, and the others are recyclable under certain processes.
  • Most hardcover books have what are called head and tail bands sewn across the spine, and since these are purely decorative, we chose not to use them.
  • We used printers that were close to our warehouse to minimize emissions from transport. Both the text and cover printers were FSC-certified.
     

We are now applying some of the things we learned in the process to more of our books; for instance, we have changed some of our standard trim sizes to ones that create zero paper trimming waste at the printer. We’re also now looking to green our publicity tours, starting with Margaret Atwood’s
Year of the Flood, choosing hotels that are more environmentally responsible and restaurants that serve local and organic food.


Greening our office

Apart from the actual production of our books, we’re also working to green our office. Since November 2008, we have:

  • Switched to green cleaning supplies
  • Switched to an electronic catalogue format to reduce paper waste
  • Cut our paper consumption by about 30%
  • Volunteered to participate in a Canopy pilot program in 2010, in which we use office paper made from wheat straw instead of trees.


Publishing what we preach

Publishing environmental books has long been a priority for McClelland & Stewart. Back in the 1980s, we originated The Canadian Green Consumer Guide, a book that sold hundreds of thousands of copies. We are the publishers of Canadian icons in the field of nature and conservation, and of groundbreaking issue books on topics such as the privatization of water. We also publish significant works by significant international environmental leaders. These are just some of the many books on environmental topics that we publish: