DK’s global Sustainability Working Party was created to deliver plans on sustainability as volunteers from our offices around the world meet monthly to create and execute our global strategy. The meetings also act as a forum to discuss ideas that will drive forward sustainability initiatives. We also have local colleague-led Green committees dedicated to encouraging sustainable behaviors among colleagues, including reducing printing and single-use plastic. These committees also participate in local and global events throughout the year to raise awareness about environmental causes, such as Earth Day and World Environment Day.
Years: 2020
Supporting Local Booksellers with #SaveIndieBookstores
U.S. (2020)
We are committed to supporting bookstores as special places that provide a source of comfort, information, and imagination to their local communities. As ever, we strive to be the best partner, now and in the future, for our bookselling community, and we remain supportive of those retail partners who have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis.
In response to COVID-19, we expanded our support with a new initiative to donate 30% of book purchases made on our website to the #SaveIndieBookstores campaign of our long-standing partner, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc). This initiative directly benefited booksellers who urgently needed financial help with medical bills, household expenses, and other essentials.
Response to Australian Bushfire Crisis
In late 2019 and early 2020, Australia was ravaged by the worst bushfires ever experienced in the country. Across four states, lives and livelihoods were lost, homes destroyed, and our wildlife and their natural habitats critically impacted. PRH Australia, with the support of PRH Canada and PRH U.S., raised $75,000 through fundraising events across all sites, and that money was subsequently distributed to Australia Red Cross and wildlife rescue organizations in the most severely impacted states of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.
DK’s Green Pledge
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.
Conversion to Renewable Energy Credits
We successfully made the transition to purchasing Renewable Energy Credits at our distribution center in Westminster, Maryland, offsetting 100% of its electrical usage and making it possible to support clean energy. Both of our warehouses in the United States now purchase wind credits to offset 100% of their power. Our offices in the United Kingdom also completed their transition to renewable energy in October 2018, and our New York City headquarters is on track to reach 100% wind energy credits by the end of 2020.
Reduction of Packaging Waste
We have been making conscious efforts to reduce our packing materials. In our Returns department, we’ve programmed our shipping machine to create custom-sized cartons for returned books that need to be put back in inventory. This machine creates shipping cartons in the exact sizes required to hold the books, which means that we use less corrugate and no plastic bubble packing material to fill in empty spaces. If needed, we use our “ravioli” packaging to create filler, which is 100% curbside recyclable. In general, this machine has helped us greatly reduce our packaging waste.
Penguin Random House Teacher Awards for Literacy
U.S. (2020)
In support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in recognition of the urgent need to recruit and empower educators of color, together with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), we reimagined our annual Teacher Awards program for 2020, which we began cosponsoring and administering in 2019.
This year, in lieu of distributing grants for its two competitions, the National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry, we made a $25,000 joint donation on behalf of both award programs to the Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Award Program (EC-EOC), which supports early-career teachers of color as they build accomplished teaching careers in literacy education.
Built upon the Penguin Random House Teacher Awards for Literacy, which began in 2012 and has awarded more than $180,000 in teacher grants to date, this NCTE partnership awards two separate and distinct grant awards of $10,000 each: The National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers honors a teacher who inspires their students to read all genres of writing, and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry recognizes a teacher who inspires their students to love poetry.
Our partnership with the NCTE recognizes the nation’s most dynamic and resourceful teachers who creatively inspire and instill a lifelong love of reading and poetry in students. The National Teacher Award for Lifelong Readers and the Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry honor teachers’ recognizes and supports educators doing innovative literacy work within their schools and local communities. The awards are open to full- and part-time teachers in public schools, and winners are awarded both cash grants and book donations. To learn more about the awards and our recent winners, click here.
Celebrating Earth Day
U.S. (2020)
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.
Enriching School Library Collections
CHINA (2020)
We are offering free reading programs to the Dunhuang Dongjie Primary School in the Gansu Province. A workshop and twenty-five copies of Dunhuang are included in the program, and, we donated 50 copies of original Penguin Random House titles to enrich the school’s library collections.
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.