At DK, we care deeply about an ethical supply chain and taking positive actions beyond that of a publisher. Our Green Pledge was launched in early 2020 and pulls together all the important work we do to maintain an ethical supply chain, and the positive steps we are planning for the future. Our work is split into four key areas—materials, environment, safety, and sustainable supply chains—and these will continue to be the focus of our efforts. Our Green Pledge acts as an essential framework for our processes, identifying what we have achieved so far in our sustainability goals and what our next steps will be to maintain an ethical supply chain. To learn more about the pledge, click here.
Regions: AUSTRALIA
Partnership with the Story Factory
We have been partnering with the Story Factory since it opened in 2011. A not-for-profit creative writing center for marginalized young people aged 7 to 17, the Story Factory hosts a comprehensive program of workshops that helps build literacy, confidence, and creativity. We have helped publish various anthologies and collections over the years, and our employees volunteer to help edit, design, and typeset the novellas and poetry chapbooks that emerge from the Story Factory’s yearlong programs. In 2020, we were delighted to publish The Coconut Children by Vivian Pham, a graduate of the program. To learn more about the Story Factory, click here. To learn more about our partnership, click here and here.
Annual Write It Fellowship
We launched our inaugural Write It Fellowship in Australia in 2019. The Write It Fellowship aims to find, nurture, and develop unpublished voices across all genres, focusing on writers from marginalized backgrounds. The four winners of the fellowship received mentorship from Penguin Random House editors with the hope of publication, as well as a trip to our offices in Sydney to participate in a Penguin Random House Open House. After a successful launch, this will be an annual program. To learn more, click here and here.
Reduction of Paper and Single-Use Plastics
Globally, we have increased our efforts to reduce single-use plastic and printing in our offices. Simple solutions have helped us make significant impacts, like using branded Penguin Random House mugs instead of one-time-use paper cups, defaulting to double-sided printing to reduce paper waste, and sharing motivation and encouragement in email signatures to limit printing. In the United Kingdom, we’ve implemented reduction projects to remove single-use plastic from shipping boxes and replaced it with reused cardboard. Transitioning to e-contracts alone has reduced paper consumption in the United Kingdom by more than one million units a year. In Australia, we initiated a “Keep Cup Drive” and saved an estimated 70,800 single-use paper cups from the landfill. In India, we took a pledge to make our office plastic-free and increase our efforts toward reduced energy consumption. India replaced all packaged plastic water bottles with Penguin-branded glass bottles; uses biodegradable paper for waste, has a default setting to print double sided, and automatically deletes print commands after a few hours of no response; and introduced Green Hour every week to avoid using electricity and appliances such as laptops and printers.
Participation in Australia Clean Up Day
An energetic team of volunteers from our Sydney and Melbourne offices stepped up to Clean Up Australia. In Melbourne, our volunteers met at Markham Reserve to help clean up a nearby creek, while the Sydney team took on a challenging site at Primrose Park. Together with Bushland management staff, we gathered and hauled all manner of garbage and furniture, collecting two truckloads and 20 bags loaded with 200 kilograms of garbage. After a successful day, we celebrated with an afternoon tea in the park provided by the Green Team.
Employee Book Donations for Our Anniversary
Our fifth anniversary as Penguin Random House in July 2018 provided an unprecedented opportunity to unite around the globe to get more books into the hands of more readers. Through a special anniversary global book donation, we offered every Penguin Random House employee worldwide a selection of free books to donate to any philanthropic or nonprofit organization of their choice. Thousands of our employees joined the campaign, and we were able to provide more than 72,000 books to children and adults in need. Recipient organizations included schools, libraries, hospitals, rural development NGOs, and organizations that serve homeless and incarcerated individuals.
$100,000 to Promote Youth Reading
In the lead-up to Puffin’s 80th anniversary in 2020, we awarded $100,000 to 54 bookshops to help nurture young readers in their communities. Bookshops were invited to submit proposals for programs they would like to start in their communities, and the winning bookshops received funding between $500 and $5,000. Standouts included Puffin Poetry workshops in western Australia, a Books for Blokes reading club encouraging dads to read to kids in Queensland, a program helping prison moms read to their kids in New South Wales, prizes for readers in kids’ book clubs, revamped kids’ sections in stores, readers’ hubs for regional schools, street libraries, author visits, and many more. To learn more about the program and our winners, click here and here.
Supporting the Indigenous Literacy Foundation
In Australia we donate up to $100,000 annually to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF), and over the past three years we have also partnered with the organization to manage their Create Initiative. Each year we have hosted 11 students from the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory at either our Sydney or Melbourne office and assisted them in writing, illustrating, and publishing a book over the course of a week with an editorial team, ILF staff, and ambassadors. All profits from the sale of the book are donated to Tiwi College and the ILF. To learn more, click here and here.