Run by the Climate Group, Climate Week NYC is a place for the world to showcase amazing climate action and discuss how to do more. We supported the weeklong event with our Sustainability Subcommittee holding a series of events and learning opportunities for our colleagues. We had the opportunity to participate in our ongoing company-wide sustainability efforts with activities such as a PRH Green Book Club in-house author event, a mug drive to reduce single-use cups, and Green Mindful Moments, which are short themed company posts that provide tips for ways we can exercise more conscious, sustainable practices in our day-to-day work lives.
Years: 2019
Commitment to the Paris Agreement
In 2017, we joined industry leaders in signing on to the We Are Still In initiative to express our unwavering support of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2019, we confirmed again our support for the Paris Agreement as the U.S. government began the process of withdrawing from it. We joined other global companies to call upon the U.S. government not to withdraw from the agreement. To learn more about the We Are Still In initiative, click here.
Celebrating Earth Day
To celebrate Earth Day in 2019, our Sustainability Subcommittee hosted the first-ever Penguin Random House Green Week. Green Week aims to bring a greater awareness to ways colleagues can live greener, more sustainable lives. The group organized events and activities that were devoted to areas such as environmental conservation, composting and food waste, recycling, and how to get involved and take action locally, as well as programs to help reduce the use of plastic, paper, and energy.
This year, our Sustainability Subcommittee reimagined Green Week for a virtual setting to inspire colleagues to learn more about how to conserve our natural resources, take action locally and at home during this period of social distancing, and provide resources for how to live a greener life. Through an author event and daily green-living tips, our employees directly received actionable resources and information to positively impact our world and environment.
Joint Donation to Help Protect the Amazon
On Amazon Day in Brazil, we made a joint donation with our Brazilian publishing group, Companhia das Letras, to the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), which has worked for 25 years to defend the Amazon and Brazil’s rich socioenvironmental diversity. ISA works with Indigenous communities, quilombolas and extractivists, and historical partners to help protect Indigenous territories and develop sustainable economic alternatives to the exploitation of their lands. We believe that sustainability and environmental protection are a worldwide effort, and we are committed to our ongoing social impact efforts. To learn more about our joint donation, click here.
Supporting Cancer Research with Read for the Cure
Penguin Random House Canada is the founding presenting partner of the national Read for the Cure event series, which recently announced that nearly $100,000 was raised at events in 2019. This is money that goes directly to funding entire projects through the Cancer Research Society. Since 2006, this annual event series has raised more than $1.6 million for cancer research. Employees volunteer at events, and Penguin Random House Canada authors take part in each event. Authors who have participated in past include Margaret Atwood, Vincent Lam, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Linden MacIntyre, Carol Off, Michael Redhill, Catherine Gildiner, Lisa Wingate, Rebecca Makkai, and Miriam Toews.
Support for the Toronto Public Library
We support the Toronto Public Library (TPL)—the world’s busiest urban public library system—through contributions to their Foundation, including a recent donation toward the construction of the new Jack Rabinovitch Reading Room. Rabinovitch founded the Giller Prize in 1994 to recognize excellence in Canadian literature, and, after he passed away in 2017, his family generously donated his extensive personal library to the TPL. This new 2,500 square-foot reading room will house the collection, making this diverse and important body of Canadian literature accessible to the public and providing a space for authors to read and work. In addition to this donation, we are also proud to support the TPL with contributions to their community bookmobiles, after-school programs for youth, and author readings.
Celebrating Pride in Toronto
Our pop-up Penguin Cart was on-site at the Toronto Pride Parade in 2019, where we partnered with local LGBTQIA+ store Glad Day Bookshop to sell books and host authors, including Gigi Gorgeous. We also raised funds on social media for The 519, a Toronto-based agency that provides services and support for LGBTQIA+ communities, and hosted an in-office drop-in for employees that featured a range of queer-authored and -themed books for staff to take home.
Transition to LED Lighting
Beginning in 2018, Penguin Random House U.S. started shifting to LED lighting and is now saving more than 2.75 megawatt hours annually, including:
- All floors of our New York City headquarters building (saving more than 743,000 kWh annually)
- All lighting in the Westminster office areas (saving more than 400,000 kWh annually)
- Westminster warehouse areas (saving more than 1 megawatt annually)
- In 2022, we completed installation of LED lighting throughout the Hampstead Distribution Center
- Starting in 2023, we are installing LED lighting in the Crawfordsville distribution center (saving more than 600,000 kWh annually)
Partnership to Build Access to Education
In 2019, we partnered with Agrasar, a Gurugram-based NGO that works with disadvantaged communities in India, and the Community Library Project, a Delhi-based reading project for children that focuses on building community libraries in the country. Their Learning Program is a low-cost, volunteer-driven citizen initiative. They work with disadvantaged communities, especially children, providing them access to a range of books and encouraging reading. We sponsored a reading fluency program for approximately 150 children from local village areas, helping them enhance their speed and reading accuracy, thereby honing their creative imagination and reading skills. This enabled kids to be more confident readers, accelerate their reading rate, and enjoy longer and more complex books. The children’s progress exceeded expectations in both fluency and accuracy. Many readers became skilled and confident to read longer, more age-appropriate books.
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.