Books, paper and publishing

Originally published in Bound Vol. 2

Introduction

This report aims to try and balance the benefits of books with the real and present damage that producing them does. The problem with doing so is that it is attempting to compare an almost unquantifiable value against a quantifiable value. There is some scientific evidence as to why books and paper are good for us, but there is also a love or a feeling of the benefits of books that can not necessarily be ‘proven’ through scientific methods. Therefore, it is not the aim of this report to come to a conclusion but to present the information in a way that aims to contribute new and current understandings of the issues involved and reflect on how those issues might be considered by the publishing industry. The report will draw from a range of domestic and international sources, and from scientific studies, industry reports, and social commentary on the issues discussed. The topics discussed will be the benefit of books as objects, educational benefits of handwriting and writing on paper, paper and creativity, the impact that paper production has forests and wild places, carbon emissions, waste and water, the return model, the privilege of waste, positive industry practices, and the benefit of libraries.

Books as objects

'Can books, without much explanation, without being read even, say something?'
(Frank, 2004)

Books have cultural value to us not only for what is written inside them, but also for their form. Beautiful books line museum and library shelves. Having a library in your house is as much of a status symbol as a piano, indicating that you are well read, most likely wealthy, and sophisticated. It may even be appropriate to use a book as a paperweight, covered in coffee or wax stains (Perloff-Giles, 2011). Whether you grew up with books in the house or not has been found to be a good indicator of your future literacy levels, regardless of whether you read them or not:

Growing up with almost no books is associated with literacy levels at about half a standard deviation below the mean in the pooled sample. Having had approximately 80 books in adolescent home library raises literacy levels to the average. (Donovan, 2020)

Being physically surrounded by books can change the way a reader interacts with a text when they read it; for example, ‘libraries, by their natures as book-rich environments, prime the patron for deeper engagement with texts, especially of a challenging quality’ (Donovan, 2020). There is, at least for some, a joy in flicking through the pages of a book, browsing crammed bookshop shelves, or placing a just-finished book on a bookshelf, a joy that is not dependent upon the particular words written inside the book.

Handwriting and writing on paper

The familiar sound of fingers flitting over keyboards now fills our schools, universities, workplaces and libraries. We rarely handwrite with paper and pen in a professional setting anymore, and this is being reflected in our curriculum: the slow death of cursive writing being taught in schools has created an uproar, but might this outrage simply be ‘imposing our false nostalgia on the new generation? (Prendergast, 2019)

Research suggests that typing when note-taking, like in a university lecture, may result in shallower processing of the information, leading to impaired learning. Students typing lecture notes on laptops are often faster, but less likely to be on task, or even satisfied with the quality of their own education (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). It may in fact be the speed that typing allows that may ‘impair the encoding benefits’ because we can type verbatim notes and copy down exactly what is said. When we type notes by hand, it is a slower process that requires us to hear the information, transform it, shorten it, and write it down in the same timeframe. The same study showed that the shallower processing occurred not only with learning done when writing, but also when reading, showing that paper and digital cannot be interchanged without effects.

Paper and creativity

Even a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil are more preferable for philosophizing than typing the same words down, since writing a word out, letter by letter, is a more self-conscious process and one more likely to inspire further revisions and elaborations of that thought. (Simic, 2011)

Painters, artists and writers continue to value physical paper and notebooks. As with handwriting and learning, this may have something to do with the slowness, and the manual movements, that paper and ink or lead encourage: ‘it's a deep-felt, uninterrupted connection between thought and language which technology seems to short circuit’ (Rourke, 2011). Despite increasing amount of digitisation, some paper companies are only becoming more popular. The company that produces Moleskines, for instance, ‘is red hot, consistently recording double-digit sales growth’ (Weiner, 2015). There is evidence that shows this use of physical notebooks is not necessarily the antinomy of paper but used in harmony with it; there is a ‘direct correlation between sales of [Moleskine’s] little black books and proximity to an Apple store’ (Weiner, 2015). Moleskine books, similar to Penguin’s Classic series, have achieved cultural value; they are objects of desire for their form, as signifiers of a certain type of creativity.

Forests and wild places

Over half of the earth’s forests have been cleared or burned...42% of the harvest from these forests is used to make paper

As much as the thought of books gives rises to romantic imagery—of fingers brushing across a soft paper page, or an old, curling, well-loved book on a nightstand—it is hard to ignore the fact that paper comes from trees, and trees form the forests that provide us with our oxygen and with our lives. ‘Trees and forests are of inestimable value to man and the rest of the other creatures,’ so will it ever be possible to weigh the benefit of books against the damage that forestry, and paper production, does to the earth? (Udeajah & Nche, 2013) Only 23% of the earth remains wild, (Allan, et al., 2018) and over half of the earth’s forests have been cleared or burned. 42% of the harvest from these forests is used to make paper. One acre of forest (approximately 4046 square metres) can transform enough carbon dioxide to oxygen to meet the needs of 18 people per year (Allan, et al., 2018). Forest farming is becoming more common to meet the continually growing demand for paper products. Diversity in farming forests is reduced, animals lose biodiverse homes which are replaced by row upon row of monocrop trees. Tree farms, due to their artificial nature, increase the danger of drought, fires, flooding and landslides. They present a danger, rather than a solution, to a warming earth: ‘intact forests are critical … in their role in mitigating climate change, maintaining hydrological cycles and other key ecosystem processes, and providing habitat for a wide range of flora and fauna’ (Lindenmayer, et al., 2020). A temperate rainforest for example, is the most complex of all temperate ecosystems and is renowned for its sustainability and longevity, which is often attributed to the diversity of species it contains. The unprecedented bushfire season of summer 2019–2020 in Australia has been directly linked to the extensive logging and land clearing that has occurred on our continent. Since white settlement in Australia, ‘while the full extent of forest loss and degradation is unknown, some estimates show that at least 30% of eucalypt open forest and 30% of rainforest have been lost due to logging and agriculture,’ and ‘between 1996 and 2018, 161 million cubic metres of native forest was logged’ (Lindenmayer, et al., 2020). This has had a ‘direct and immediate impact’ that has made ‘many Australian forests more fire prone and contributed to increased fire severity, and flammability’ (Lindenmayer, et al., 2020). With only 23% of the earth, which includes Antarctica, left in a wild state, it is incredibly important to consider any impact on our remaining wild places. Something is lost when we clear old growth and wild forests, something which there is no scientific evidence that we are able to get back: ‘some experts are beginning to think that rewilding is not only impossible but possibly harmful if ecologists aren't able to untangle the many variables in these new, human-made landscapes’ (Learn, 2018).

Carbon emissions, waste and water

Even disregarding the carbon sinks lost as old forests are cleared, the paper industry has a significant contribution to rising levels of carbon dioxide. In the USA, the paper industry is the ‘4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions. (Udeajah & Nche, 2013)

All this paper that is produced has to go somewhere; paper comprises approximately 27% of our landfills. In industrialised nations, the publishing industry alone comprises 11% of freshwater consumption (Carpenter, 2016). This is not necessarily just an issue with traditional paper books. A single e-reader’s approximate carbon footprint, which mostly comes from the manufacturing process, is 168 kg, compared to a book’s footprint in the area of 7.5 kg (Carpenter, 2016). This means that an e-reader needs to replace around 22 books before it becomes more beneficial for the environment in terms of carbon. Does an e-reader replace that many physical books sold and therefore have less of an impact on the environment? There is no current information that shows that they do, but their small share of the market would suggest that at least not all of them do (Case, 2018).

The return model

One of the unique features of the publishing industry is what is known as the ‘return model’; publishers accept the return of their books that are not sold, at considerable expense to themselves and the environment. This sales model evolved from the Great Depression and remains a ‘blight on the industry,’ despite several attempts by publishing houses to have it abolished (Greco, 2015). Booksellers, already at risk from ‘rising rents, e-books, and the ongoing competition with cheap online booksellers,’ refuse to allow the abolition of a model that frees them from the financial burden of unsold stock (David, 2014). Consider alone the carbon miles involved in the following case study:

Quite often, booksellers will order a book, not sell it, return it and then, some short period of time later, reorder the same book. So now it gets shipped in, gets shipped out, gets shipped in—and if doesn't sell, it gets shipped out again. Roughly 25 percent of what we ship out comes back in the form of a return, so one out of every four books. (Neary, 2008)

Other estimates place the percentage of books returned even higher at 30–40%, and the ones not re-sold are pulped, with all the materials, carbon miles, packaging, warehousing, and printing, all wasted (Franklin, 2018).One positive development for the publishing industry is the increased viability of digital printing and smaller print runs. Books have traditionally been printed using the offset method, where the book to be printed is etched into expensive metal plates, not an entirely dissimilar process from the printing press. Digital printing in the publishing industry is a grown-up version of home or office printers, using the same laser technology on a bigger scale. Because there is a low set-up cost to digital printing, as no plates need to be manufactured as they do in offset printing, there is no financial reason to overprint books that may not sell, which in turn allows the publisher to do smaller print runs and respond to demand—meaning that there is less stock to warehouse, and if a book does not perform well, and less stock to be returned and pulped. This is particularly relevant in a market like Australia, where the print runs are significantly smaller than for larger markets like Europe or the USA. Whilst for some time there was an industry dislike of digital printing because of its low quality, perceived or otherwise, improvements in digital printing technology have meant that the ‘stigma about the quality of digital [printing],’ is waning (Shaffstall, 2015). The following example shows how smaller digital print runs can be balanced against offset printing: ‘If my customer has 1,000 titles, and 700 are big enough for offset, but they cannot move as many units of the other 300 in six months, we’ll run those 300 digitally in smaller runs of hundreds or any number of variations on the same approach’ (Shaffstall, 2015). The internet and online booksellers may be improving the return model because as second hand or damaged books can be sold online (Neary, 2008).

The privilege of waste

As with all things, the consumption of paper, and the responsibility for the waste and the environmental damage it causes, is not equal

It would be remiss not to include in this report the privileged aspect of talking about whether paper is worth the environmental impact that it creates. As with all things, the consumption of paper, and the responsibility for the waste and the environmental damage it causes, is not equal. The entire continent of Africa accounts for just 2% of global paper usage, while ‘the average American consumes more than 700 pounds [317.5 kg] of paper yearly, which is the world’s highest per capita figure. This is followed by Western Europe—400 pounds per person yearly, Australia—300 pounds, while China, India and the rest of Asia are the fastest growing per-capita users’ (Martin & Haggith, 2018). It is also not unreasonable to suggest that, even if we legislate greater or total protection of our native and wild forests here in Australia and reduce our logging, that our need for paper and wood pulp will simply move overseas to a country more economically vulnerable and willing to clear its forests in the name of creating jobs and generating income (Meyfroidt, et al., 2010).

Positive industry practices

Approximately 13% of paper fibre in new books is from old books or other recycled material (Shaer, 2017). It is an important way to ensure not only that we only harvest new trees when we absolutely need to, but that the materials we do get from logging our forests is used for as long as possible. Paper recycling rates in Australia are amongst the highest in the world with over 69% of all paper and paperboard consumed being recovered (Australian Forest Products Association, 2020). Printing on recycled paper has long been an industry technique not to just support the environment but is also a tool to market books to consumers. Australian publisher Black Rainbow uses ‘100% recycled, non-chlorine bleached, alternative fibre papers, organic based non-toxic inks and solar power to further reduce environmental impacts’ (Black Rainbow, 2020). There are various industry programs to ensure that publishes source their timber from sustainable sources. For example, HarperCollins’s ‘HarperGreen’ website boasts that the publisher is a member of the following industry programs: Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI) and Canadian Standards Association (CSA) (HarperCollins, 2020). HarperCollins also ‘seeks to reduce weights on titles where appropriate in order to reduce the use of fiber [sic] and raw materials consumed in the production of that paper’ (HarperCollins, 2020). However, the constant balancing of publishing houses between their relatively thin profit margins and the need for strong environmental protections ‘can be seen as a “plural compromise”, a strategy typical of second modernity, which consists of forming compromises between fundamentally contradictory principles’ (Lidskog, et al., 2017).

Conclusion

The production of books, and the protection of the environment, are fundamentally contradictory principles. The publishing industry must increasingly grapple with the problems that it creates as the world loses the last of its wild places. There are positive signs for the industry; paper recycling is increasing, improvements in digital printing are making shorter print runs more cost effective, and libraries allow us all to share in a common resource. However, the damage done to the environment by the publishing and forestry industries is massive, and the return model has yet to be dealt with. If the publishing industry is to move forward, it must deal with this contradiction and move towards being an industry that does less environmental harm. The emergence of a strong second-hand book market and more efficient printing methods are encouraging, however the book publishing industry is one of thin margins and economic uncertainty. These pressures make it harder to press for change that may prove costly, or to encourage booksellers to let go of a selling model that would push more financial risk onto them.

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Morgan Begg10 November 2021