Bridget Carson and Marley Miller

How are sustainability commitments made and met in the Australian publishing industry?

Keywords: Australian publishing industry, carbon emissions, Hachette, Penguin Random House Australia (PRH Australia), sustainable practices, University of Queensland Press (UQP)

Introduction

At least on the surface, the Australian publishing industry has embraced the movement towards more sustainable practices. But the question remains: how are these changes implemented and tracked? While many larger organisations within the publishing industry speak of commitment to sustainable practice, a significant portion don’t adequately report on how they are enacting that commitment, and what measure of success they have had. Here, we look at current documentation on best practice and sustainability within the Australian publishing industry and consider how these commitments and policies are crafted and met.

The Australian publishing industry: an overview

In 2023, the Australian Publishers Association (APA) published the results of a survey designed to measure engagement with and commitment to sustainability at an industry level. Their survey concluded that over 50% of the participating publishing houses have a person or team tasked with addressing sustainability. Others were in the process of hiring such a person or team, whereas a third indicated that a specific sustainability team wasn’t a priority for their organisation. A similar percentage breakdown was found in response to a question about whether the organisation has a written environmental policy or statement.

While this survey gives a snapshot, it is important to note that only 27 publishing houses took part in the survey. However, the data set still provides an indication of the attitude/commitment to sustainable practices within the Australian publishing landscape.

Online documentation

When it comes to documentation, Penguin Random House Australia (PRH Australia) sets an industry standard with their regularly updated sustainability reports. This is a conscious choice made by the company. As noted by their CEO Julie Burland, they understand that their company is a leader in the publishing industry and that their actions can ‘inspire change amongst many’. This level of reporting also provides a clear way to track progress.

While not quite as comprehensive as PRH’s, Elsevier Publishing also published a climate action report in 2022, and another in 2024. These reports detail their carbon emissions as well as their specific commitments to becoming more sustainable.

By comparison, other major publishing houses, such as Hachette Australia, have nothing more on their website than a brief description of their goals and an environmental policy statement created by their printers in 2018. Beyond this, there is no publicly available information about their sustainability practices.

While there are no legal requirements for publishers in Australia to publish their sustainability goals or report, the lack of transparency makes it difficult to track—and so improve—industry-wide practices, goals and progress around sustainability commitments.

Industry-wide goals

Within the Australian publishing industry, there is little consensus about how best to reduce, or even report on, carbon emissions. Many of the smaller publishing houses have little to no resources to reduce their climate footprint, and many of the larger publishing houses simply follow goals outlined by their international counterparts, which often don’t consider the specific Australian context.

For example, Elsevier, like PRH, has a specific goal to achieve net zero. Unlike PRH, whose environmental goals are mainly focused on emission reduction, Elsevier’s sustainability reports mainly address the commitment to sustainability within their own company. Aside from their goal of net zero by 2040, much of Elsevier’s sustainable commitments outlined in their reports focus on culture, such as:

• Embedding a sustainable mindset into their business culture.
• Increasing awareness and understanding of climate change.
• Working with suppliers to reduce Scope 3 emissions.
• Collaborating within the industry on projects and initiatives.

This approach lacks measurables against which to track progress, resulting in a wide variation of goals and a lack of focus. While this isn’t necessarily a detriment, it is indicative of an industry where the process of reducing emissions is solely the responsibility of individual companies.

The lack of industry-wide sustainability standards or measurables is less of an issue for larger publishing houses, or those with larger parent companies, who have the support and funds to track, manage and eventually reduce their own emissions. For smaller publishers though, which make up a large portion of the Australian publishing industry, collective industry action is necessary for carbon emissions reductions.

Case study: Hachette Australia

Established in 2004, Hachette Australia (previously Hodder & Stoughton) is one of Australia’s largest publishing houses. As of 2024, Hachette Australia remains in the top five publishing houses based on market share, accounting for 4.1% of domestic revenue. A subsidiary of Lagardere SCA, Hachette Australia focuses on publishing Australian authors, while remaining a distributor for imported books.

Aside from an environmental policy statement, crafted in 2018, Hachette Australia has minimal documented information on their sustainability practices. The statement was created in conjunction with OPUS Group and outlines their commitment to sustainability. The policy includes:

1. Ensuring environmental risks are properly identified, prioritised and managed.
2. Establishing sound environmental policies and promoting best practice in all areas of […] business.
3. Minimising environmental impact and reducing or (where possible) preventing pollution.
4. Minimising waste production by reduced consumption and developing effective waste and recycling management.
5. Collaborating with key suppliers to promote environmentally responsible procurement of goods and services.
6. Actively pursuing continual improvement in our environment management system.
7. Complying with all applicable environmental policy, laws and regulations.
8. Providing all employees with updated information and training in changes to environment management systems and work practices.
9. Developing and implementing environmental programs that set measurable and reportable objectives and targets.

While these policies are broad, it is hard to know whether they are ongoing or if they have been successfully implemented. With no projected timeline on the implementation of these policies, no measurables, and no further update on Hachette’s website, there is little scope to understand their current sustainability policies, procedures or commitments.

Fortunately, Hachette Australia’s CEO Louise Stark was able to shed more light on the subject. In terms of the specific environmental practices that they have in place and want to implement, Stark explained that the first place they looked were the ‘big ticket items’.

This meant looking at the production and distribution of their books. Since production and distribution are some of the biggest contributors of emissions in the publishing industry, it makes sense that this would be where they could implement the most positive change.

Some of these changes included only producing books from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper and, wherever possible, using boats rather than planes for distribution. Stark spoke about how Hachette was putting ‘a lot of work […] into continually improving [the] supply chain’, an example of which is their use of print on demand (PoD) which ‘takes a lot of supply chain waste out’ of the process. Hachette also places importance on printing locally wherever possible and ‘continually investing in research’ to improve their sustainable practices.

From a holistic perspective, Hachette places emphasis on ‘changing the story’.

Changing the story […] is our social responsibility pillar […] that includes making sure that our workforce looks like the society that we live in, investing in First Nations voices so that their stories can be heard.

- Stark 2025

Stark went on to say that ‘changing the story’ wasn’t just about social responsibility but also about environmental sustainability. She clarified that a people-led sustainability network within the organisation helps implement some of this change, as ‘they look at every part of the business to see if we can […] behave more sustainably.’

In terms of keeping track of their progress, collecting data and measuring success, they have outsourced this to a team based in the UK, though we were unable to find any published figures.

Hachette also looks at sustainability at a micro level. They do this by, ‘looking at every part of the business and saying how can we tweak that to make it better’. Practices they have already implemented include:

• Encouraging their employees to regularly do a ‘digital declutter’.
• Promoting organic recycling in the office.
• Maintaining their Sydney office’s 100% sustainable energy status.
• Reducing printing/printing on recycled paper.

They also recently held a training day that focused on the micro actions individuals can do, as a part of their push to focus on ‘not just big moves but small moves too’ as a team. When asked about the challenges Hachette, as well as the whole Australian publishing industry, faces when it comes to implementing sustainable practices, Stark expressed that the biggest hurdle was cost. Stark explained that even Hachette relies on its parent company heavily for things like data collection. Without their larger parent company’s support, a lot of what they have managed to implement simply wouldn’t be feasible. Unfortunately, this is true for many of Australia’s smaller publishing companies.

Another constraint the publishing industry faces is simply the lack of suitable alternatives. One area Hachette Australia would like to be more sustainable in is the paper used to produce their books, but as Stark explains ‘every time you recycle paper it degrades slightly […] so that quality is not right, [it isn’t] there at this point.’ In the future, production may ‘move to recycled paper’ but until the quality increases, it is not a suitable choice for the company.

To deal with these constraints, Hachette has adopted ‘a piece at a time’ approach. They understand that some of their bigger aspirations are long term goals—for instance, getting their warehouse, which currently runs on an estimated 25% solar power, to be 100% renewable.

A lot of Hachette’s goals are currently in progress. For instance, they’ve projected that replacing their fleet of cars with electric vehicles will be completed by the end of the year (2025). They are also confident that by 2026 their UK team will have collated enough information to help them map out their sustainability future.

Case study: University of Queensland Press (UQP)

Established in 1948, the University of Queensland Press (UQP) is a small publishing house of less than 50 employees operating out of the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane. Publishing a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, they were named Australia’s Small Publisher of the Year for three consecutive years (2021-2023) by the Australian Book Industry awards.

They are also Australia’s first climate-positive publishing house, according to the International Publishers Association (IPA). The IPA credited this status to a combination of internal leadership and institutional support from UQ, which ‘made that pathway’ possible. UQP’s position as part of UQ has given them access to university resources, networks, and sustainability programs—such as their Green Office program—that would otherwise be out of reach due to ‘money issue[s]’.

The Green Office program is part of a wider Green Programs initiative at UQ, which aims to raise sustainability standards across the university and claims to be ‘designed to help UQ staff who want to implement more environmentally friendly practices in their workplaces’. According to UQ’s 2023 report, the Green Office program most commonly conducts ‘waste audit[s] of the workplace’, identifying areas in which different departments may need assistance, and educating each departmental representative on ‘waste reduction’ so that they can share this information with their teams.

One key example of UQ’s integral support is the introduction they provided to Pangolin Associates, who partnered with UQP to measure, calculate and assess their carbon emissions over a course of 24 months. If not for their relationship with the university, this process would likely have been too resource intensive for them to complete.

As of 1 July 2021, Australian businesses have to pay an annual licensing fee in order to be certified carbon neutral, starting at $840 (depending on business size and average carbon emissions). This fee increases annually at a percentage of 2.5%, as noted by Climate Active. In our interview with UQP, they acknowledged that achieving any formal sustainability certifications—such as their climate positive status—would be difficult without extra funding or support, as verification and assessment is an expensive process.

UQP also credits their progress to opportunities found through industry collaboration and knowledge sharing. Former director Ben James, who stood down in 2024, sat on the Diversity and Inclusion working group at the Australian Publishers Association (APA) starting in 2022. This enabled information sharing and collaboration with key leaders from other publishing entities, such as Hardie Grant, Hachette, Penguin Random House and Magabala Books. UQP views the APA, their resources and their committees, as valuable tools for all publishers, setting the sustainability standard throughout the industry.

UQP describes their approach towards sustainability commitments as adaptive, jumping on good initiatives where and when they arise. As part of this process, they use Australia-based printers, mainly McPhersons and Griffin, to keep production onshore. Additional initiatives mentioned in the interview were largely office-based sustainability actions, including their UQP-run soft plastics recycling program, usage of low-energy lighting, and the aforementioned participation in the university’s Green Office program.

In addition to UQP’s current sustainability initiatives, it was clearly stated in their interview that they have high hopes for the future. While they were unable to continue their annual carbon offsetting last year (2024) due to a lack of funding, they hope to resume this in 2025 and maintain it in the future.

They have also emphasised doing their best to make use of evolving industry initiatives—such as APA webinars—to keep learning and building upon the foundation of understanding and support already provided to them by their connection to the UQ. Further, while stating that most of their current sustainability initiatives are in a ‘maintenance’ phase—that is, in use and under monitoring—they remain open to new opportunities to improve.

Ultimately, the team at UQP believe that collaborative action will be essential to drive change within the Australian publishing industry. However, they recognise that smaller publishers tend to have limited influence in negotiating change with large industry partners. Ideally change would come—especially in printing and supply chains—through partnerships between small and large publishing organisations.

Case study: small publishers survey

The findings of the small publishers’ survey we conducted showed that, of the 10 respondents, 60% reported that they were very committed to sustainability. That said, the same number of respondents also mentioned that they did not have a formal sustainability policy.

Additionally, there was an interesting split between how effective respondents believed their sustainability efforts to be—30% each for extremely, moderately and somewhat effective, and 10% for not at all effective. It is also important to note that the majority of respondents mentioned that there were no formal measurements for effectiveness currently in place in their organisations, making it difficult to collect industry-wide data and move towards industry-wide standards.

Infographic 5: survey question—how effective do you think your organisation’s sustainability efforts have been?

What is significant about these results is that 90% of these respondents are from truly small publishers—organisations with 10 employees or less. One participant wrote:

We are tiny, but we do what we can. It should be economically advantageous to be sustainable.

Infographic 6: survey question—how many employees does your organisation have?

With this in mind, it isn’t surprising that the reported hurdles to greater sustainability commitments included cost constraints (as selected by 70% of respondents), followed closely by lack of industry standards and difficulty measuring impacts (50% of respondents each). 60% said that grants or financial assistance would be the most helpful for improving their efforts and thus contributing to a more sustainable publishing industry in Australia. The apparent lack of industry-wide support was also a concern for survey participants, with only 20% replying that they felt the support was enough for all industry operators.

Another participant wrote:

There are very few cost-effective initiatives for small businesses to take advantage of. Most of the 'affordable' options are only affordable at a scale small businesses can't commit to… Similarly, supply chains are less likely to make changes to process for small businesses—as an example, our printers removing plastic from…packaging and shipping materials often requires us to send them the alternative materials, the shipping of which often [makes] the sustainable materials redundant.

This consensus among the majority of small publishers points towards economic stability coming into direct conflict with the desire for environmental sustainability. Resources that larger entities benefit from—such as the APA’s learning materials—are of little use to smaller organisations without the budget to enact them. Further, those who do desire change have difficulty influencing other parts of the industry—such as printers and distributors. One survey participant mentioned that their distributor requires them to ‘automatically pulp all books that are returned’ or else bear their cost. As such, it is ‘more economical’ to ‘waste books’.

Findings

An interesting point of further study may be to research the support the government might provide the sector and compare this to practices in other countries with established publishing industries. Whether this be through grants and financial assistance, or subsidies based on sustainable practices, it may provide the basis for a model upon which Australian publishing organisations could found their own industry standards for assessing, measuring and setting industry standards for environmental sustainability.

Ultimately, there is a visible contrast between the capabilities of small and large publishers in Australia, as well as a clear gap in the reporting of some larger publishers, thanks to an apparent lack of industry standards. UQP, with the backing of the University of Queensland, have demonstrated that—despite their size—with financial support and access to educational materials, positive sustainability practices are not only possible but also achievable. If such materials and financial incentives were readily available to industry operators, there would be far fewer hurdles towards sustainability goals that are communicable, transparent and industry wide.