Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

Summary 1. The environmental impact of printing ink on paper is of rapidly-growing concern, whether fully-justified or not. A year ago the issue seemed like small wildfires in disparate communities. But there's now an unmistakable trend that paying heed to environmental concerns is becoming an increasing priority for publishers and the vendors that serve them.

2. Stated simply, concern about the environment has come back into vogue. Maybe it's Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps it's the rise in oil prices. There's an overdose of information on global warming. Regardless, concern about the environmental impact of all industries, including printing, is fast rising.

3. In response to these concerns, large and small companies are beginning to take concrete direct action. Regardless of the impact of these actions, the publicity that surrounds them only increases awareness of the perceived threat.

4. The Web is still perceived as environmentally-friendly, despite the enormous amount of energy consumed by the computers that constitute today's Internet.

Introduction to the Future of Environmental Concerns in Publishing

Concern about the environmental impact of just about everything was paramount through much of the 1960s and 70s, but then seemed to drop off the main agenda during the 1980s and 1990s. Was it the influence of aggressive Republicanism in the U.S., affluent economics, or just topic burn-out? Who knows? But the subject is back with a vengeance, in the publishing industry as in so many other industries. Al Gore's film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), turned into a big hit with the public and a major prize winner. The now-released DVD, along with Mr. Gore's continuing high profile (and numerous other factors) has put the environment back on the top of many people's lists of top concerns.

The paper and publishing industry has begun to get organized around this topic also, and while for years claims like "30% post-industrial waste," were sufficient to show you they cared, the number these days is now closer to "100% post-industrial waste."

Indeed, on April 3rd of last year, Transcontinental Printing, based in Montreal, and one of North America's largest commercial printers, made a trendsetting announcement: not only would it offer book printers a paper made from 100% post-consumer recycled material, but it would offer this paper without additional cost over traditional paper stocks. R.R. Donnelley has followed suit. These were the two key bullets that many in the industry had been waiting for.

• 100% recycled

• No additional cost

I expect that the executives of Transcontinental and Donnelley believe strongly that a move like this will help to stem the reduction in print production and consumption in North America. It will not doubt assuage a few guilty consciences. But, ultimately, I think its real impact will be only to heighten awareness of the problem of waste and environmental damage in print publishing.

Several new initiatives within the industry are intended to further promote awareness of the potentially negative environmental impact of paper-making and consumption.

In Canada two years ago, PrintAction magazine launched the Environmental Printing Awards. Meanwhile Book Business and Publishing Executives magazines have a new website called http://www.sustainprint.com.

Announcing the "Book Industry Treatise on Responsible Paper Use," Book Business, "Behind the Industry's Push for ‘Responsible Paper Use,'" October 01, 2006, Rudy Shur, president of Square One Publishers wrote:

"...But if we keep our eyes closed, we don't see that we might be part of a problem or perhaps a solution. When it came down to it, I realized five things that I care about and hope that others might consider: 1) Kids and grandkids; 2) Global warming; 3) Supporting the protection of rare and threatened forests; 4) Caring for the diversity of life and cultures; 5) Knowing that I tried to do the right things in life.

"There was a time when it was acceptable for child laborers in the United States to make products, and fortunately we evolved past that short-sightedness. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future we, as an industry, will look back at our shift in perception and remember when we joined forces to commit to shared principles of stewardship and accountability and how it felt to succeed."

This is all very laudable and unlikely to increase anyone's desire to use more paper, regardless of the amount of post-industrial consumer waste we can stuff into it. The challenges surrounding paper consumption are certain to have a negative impact on the future of print publishing.

Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity

In the Annotations section of the March, 2008 edition of Harper's magazine (subscription-only) is what amounts to an expose of the environmental impact of the Internet.

Among the findings:

1. "In 2006, American data centers consumed more power than American televisions."

2. Google is building a massive new datacenter in The Dalles, Oregon, in order to be able to source cheap electricity for its servers, now estimated to be as many as a million. According to the article, "Based on a projected industry standard of 500 watts per square foot in 2011, the Dalles plant can be expected to demand about 103 megawatts of electricity-enough to power 82,000 homes, or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington."

3. Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask.com are also building nearby data centers for their servers.

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