GERMANY (2020)
In 2020, we are committed to stepping up our climate protection activities and annually increase our climate-neutral book production by 20 percent. Our Munich headquarters has been climate-neutral since 2019; we have reduced our emissions where possible and offset all unavoidable emissions. By the end of 2020, the entirety of book production at all our children’s publishers will be climate-neutral, and our other group publishers will be producing more and more titles in climate-neutral ways, helping us achieve our goal of a 20 percent annual increase in climate-neutral book production across our publishers.
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.
BRAZIL (2019)
Our Brazilian publishing group, Companhia das Letras, sponsored the Brazilian Sapientia–Olympics of the Future, along with Instituto Vertere, an institution for teacher education. A nationwide competition for students aged 16 to 18, Sapientia puts young people at the center of discussions about the transforming world, taking a transdisciplinary approach that encompasses the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences. In the final stage of the competition, students develop a project related to one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals; the project should have real-life applications. To learn more about Sapientia, click here.
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.
CANADA & U.S. (2019)
We are committed to climate and environmental protection, and that includes encouraging our colleagues to participate in global movements. As millions of people around the world participated in climate strikes by walking out of their homes, schools, and offices to join in the action for change, our offices in the U.S. and Canada supported our employees who wanted to participate in their local strikes, and they were not required to use paid time off to participate.
AUSTRALIA (2020)
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.
