Extracts from - A CASE STUDY: The Search for an Eco Friendly Publishing Strategy

by Linda Weintraub

We are committed to applying 'ecologically correct' strategies to designing, printing, and distributing. But we quickly learned that 'ecological correctness' is often a morass of opinion based on scant data. Instead of definitive guidelines, we discovered warning lights accompanying hopeful possibilities, harmful effects joined to good intentions, and long term damage associated with short term benefits. Sustainable publishing is still a work-in-progress. In the end, after many months of research and deliberation, Avant-Guardians was launched according to a squabbling collection of the most probable rights and the least possible wrongs.

To date, most green publishing schemes focus on materials. They proclaim the virtues of using renewable papers and non-polluting inks. But this snippet of the publishing picture is surrounded by a hulk of practices that pose environmental threats. Offences are often committed during resource acquisition, printing, manufacturing, transport, assembly, packaging, storage, distribution, warehousing, retailing, and disposal. Conflicting sets of conditions that maximize human benefits and minimize costs to the environment exist all along this convoluted trail of interrelated processes. We identified the most recyclable material and then discovered that it entailed the greatest cost. The most efficient method often offered the least aesthetic appeal, and known environmental problems typically accompanied the most beneficial publishing conventions. Trade-offs also prevailed when the environmental advantages of producing locally conflicted with the economic advantages of outsourcing globally. Likewise, the environmental benefits of small production precluded the economic advantages of bulk manufacture.

The following description of the publishing strategies we ultimately enacted is being offered to stimulate consideration and invite comment.

 Format: Choosing strategies to print and disseminate the text was complicated because three goals needed to be satisfied before our publishing venture could be declared a success. These goals include benefiting the environment, acquiring marketing opportunities, and earning income. We contemplated and then rejected minimizing waste by offering books for rent, not sale. We considered and then discarded producing a few books that each owner had to gift to someone else. We weighed arguments that favoured conventional bound book on one hand (comfort and familiarity), and electronic alternatives on the other (flexibility and economy), but neither claimed the advantage. Traditional royalty publishing was not an option because most art book and text book publishers have not yet adopted sustainable publishing practices. Furthermore, conventional self-publishing offered no environmental advantage. The winning alternative was print-on-demand, a method that stores books digitally and only prints documents when a user requests one.

One of the advantages offered by print-on-demand is that the inefficiencies associated with printing in advance of need are avoided. Conventionally produced books are packaged, transported to a warehouse, stored, repackaged and transported to a retail establishment, and then repackaged and transported home by the consumer. Print-on-demand eliminates these intermediary steps. In addition, it can minimize the distance each book travels from manufacturer to consumer by sending the book on a PDF file to a specific printing establishment located near each individual consumer.

A second advantage is that print-on-demand is a zero-waste process. The heaps of conventionally produced books that are shipped and never sold or read comprise an environmental travesty. The oversold dead inventory is either returned, remaindered, land filled, or recycled. Since the average weight of a book is two pounds, the average distance a book currently travels is 1,000 miles, and the popularity of new books is uncertain, producing a book in bulk quantities can be as foolish as buying a whole turkey to make a sandwich because the price per pound was cheaper.

Our print-on-demand service did not provide the option of choosing paper produced in a sustainable manner. It did, however, provide the opportunity to use paper that is unbleached and uncoated, and a trim size that eliminates waste.

Print-on-demand helped, but did not satisfy our desire to emulate ecosystem vitality and dynamism. This is because tangible books, no matter how they are produced, are frozen in time and rigid in form. They contradict energy flows, short-term flux, and long-term pattern changes. Knowing that books can be dated the moment after they come off the press, we introduced flexibility into our publishing practice by presenting our material as a series of short texts instead of one lengthy volume. Print-on-demand facilitates frequent updating. Creating a new edition is no more complicated than creating a new PDF file. This structure enables the series to easily evolve, driven by feedback received from readers and new research. Furthermore, readers can select, mix, and match individual volumes that reflect topics of interest to them.

 © 2006 greenmuseum.org