INDIA (2019)
In 2018 for World Environment Day, we spearheaded the Blooming Diaries campaign, where each employee was given a notebook that, once filled, was to be planted in a pot of soil. As the special paper decomposes, it sprouts flower seeds. Another campaign was The Plant at Your Workplace, where employees would sponsor and care for a plant. This has led to green work desks, with people taking care of their plants, and inspired many to add to the collection.
More recently, in 2019, we organized a planting drive in collaboration with Give Me Trees Trust, a Delhi-based NGO working to plant trees with the help of community volunteers. We aim to give back to the environment by promising to plant one tree on behalf of each employee of ours every year from 2019 forward. Give Me Trees Trust looks after the well-being of these trees, and a government school gets a much-needed green cover. These campaigns were meant to raise awareness for sustainability, recycling, and water as a precious resource and to help start conversations among colleagues about how we can together make Penguin Random House more environmentally friendly.
NEW DELHI (2019)
The theme for World Tourism Day 2019 was “Tourism and Jobs: A Better Future for All,” and the United Nations held the event in New Delhi, India. The purpose of this day is to raise awareness on the role of tourism within the international community and to demonstrate how it affects social, cultural, political and economic values worldwide, and DK hosted an event focused on educating children on the importance of tourism.
In association with the National Rail Museum in New Delhi, DK India celebrated World Tourism Day at the museum’s indoor gallery. More than 60 schoolchildren were invited to test their geography skills through a fun quiz and pairing up activity, followed by a contest to draw a view through a train window. A range of DK books was also on display for the children to look at, covering topics such as exploration and local wildlife. As we believe in the power of discovery, it was an honor to help children explore ideas and discover new places.
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.
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.
INDIA (2018)
To celebrate 30 years of Penguin in India, we initiated the Penguin Readathon and Book Gifting Journey. We worked with 30 partners from a range of groups—community libraries, shelter homes, independent bookstores, organizations that work with people with disabilities, prisons, and more—to expand the reach of books and reading to diverse communities and audiences. We selected our partners for the role they play in bringing the joy of reading to their communities. To learn more about the campaign, click here.
NEW DELHI (2018)
We celebrated International Literacy Day in 2018 by taking the opportunity to promote reading, writing, and creativity with 14 events spread over two days. We held a short-story competition to encourage in-house talent, and employees from DK India visited young cancer patients at a children’s hospital in New Delhi, spending time painting and drawing with the children, reading to them, and gifting them books in Hindi. We also donated office and writing materials to the Love Care Foundation and Aarambh aid organizations, both of which help underprivileged children.
INDIA (2019)
In collaboration with SheThePeople, India’s first women’s channel inspired by real stories about and by women, in March 2019 we launched the Women’s Library, a monthlong campaign to showcase women’s writing and the impact that women-led writing can have on reading and in people’s daily lives. We curated a selection of work by leading women writers, domestically and internationally, making them available in bookstores across India. To learn more, click here and here.
