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.
Years: 2019
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.
Employee Support for Global Climate Strike
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.
Raising Donations with the Penguin Hotline
An annual event since 2014, the Penguin Hotline runs during the holiday season and is staffed by employee volunteers. Hundreds of employees are on call to help recommend books to anyone trying to find the right title for someone on their holiday list, and the Hotline is “publisher-agnostic,” meaning recommendations can come from various publishing houses. In 2019, the Penguin Hotline also featured various best-selling Penguin Random House authors including Celeste Ng, Jasmine Guillory, and Emma Straub, who personally answered requests. The Hotline also partnered with LitWorld, a nonprofit that addresses global literacy and human rights; we donated $2 for every reader request, up to $10,000. We donated to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, in support of the zoo’s conservation efforts to protect African penguin habitats. To learn more about Penguin Hotline, click here.
Penguin Random House Library Award for Innovation
In January 2019, we partnered with the American Library Association to create the Penguin Random House Library Award for Innovation. The award recognizes the libraries and staff who have overcome hardship and adversity to creative lasting innovative community service programs that inspire and connect with readers. It awards $10,000 to a principal awardee and four runners-up $1,000 worth of Penguin Random House titles each. To learn more, click here. To learn more about our previous winners and how to apply for this year’s award, click here.
#BookstoresAreHolidays with Binc
In December 2019, we partnered with the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc) on their year-end fundraising campaign. Launched on Small Business Saturday and running through December 31, 2019, we matched all donations made to Binc, up to $15,000. In addition, we also donated $1 for every social media post on Instagram and Twitter that used the hashtag #BookstoresAreHolidays. Binc assists booksellers who have been impacted by disasters or personal financial hardships, and, by November, the Foundation had already assisted 90 booksellers and their families in 2019. The total of $30,000 raised by the end of the year helped at least 13 additional booksellers and their families through economic hardship. To learn more about the campaign, click here and here.
#BannedTogether for Banned Books Week
We are unwavering in our support of writers who seek out truth in their stories, and the readers who embrace them. We commemorate Banned Books Week in September annually, and in 2019 we were thrilled to be #BannedTogether. For every Penguin Random House book purchased during Banned Books Week, we donated $1 to the American Booksellers for Free Expression, up to $20,000. To learn more about our 2019 campaign, click here.
Equipping Young People for the Future
Penguin Talks is a program of free creative talks for young people across the U.K. and Ireland. Attendees are given the opportunity to hear from and ask questions to a world-renowned thinker, writer, or influential figure from our family of authors. Held in local schools, Penguin Talks is meant to help equip students by introducing them to new ideas and perspectives. Each Penguin Talk is published in full online, together with free curriculum-based resources for teachers, in order to enable young people in classrooms to engage with the themes and issues discussed. Former Penguin Talks have included Michelle Obama speaking on the power of education and self-belief, Yuval Noah Harari on the future of the world of work, and Margaret Atwood on protest and activism. To learn more about the program, click here.
Volunteer Effort for World Book Day
Every year on World Book Day colleagues across the U.K. come together to celebrate the power of reading with children in their local communities. In 2020, we had our largest ever single volunteering effort, as more than 500 colleagues volunteered in literacy-vulnerable areas. We hosted interactive sessions with more 6,000 people in more than 221 schools, nurseries, and community settings including prisons and homeless shelters including storytelling with little ones and a ‘reverse book club’ with adults. To learn more about our volunteer effort, click here.
Student Design Awards
Launched in 2006, the Student Design Awards aim to find the next generation of book cover designers. Giving students the opportunity to work with real cover design briefs firsthand, the competition asks participants to reimagine iconic book covers across the award’s three categories: Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, and Children’s. The winner is awarded within our design teams as well as a cash prize of £1,000. To learn more about the award, click here. To learn more about our 2019 winners, click here.