NEW YORK, NY (2020)

In December 2020, nearly a hundred employee volunteers from PRH US participated in our 9th annual Dinner on the House in partnership with City Harvest, a volunteer experience designed to serve others and share our good fortune with those who may need a helping hand during the holiday season. We’ve previously held this event as an in-person volunteering experience at City Harvest‘s food rescue facility in Long Island City. This year, with in-person volunteering no longer a viable option due to the pandemic, we looked to City Harvest, an organization focused on feeding hungry New Yorkers,  to create new, virtual volunteer opportunities for our employees. Employees volunteered in one of two ways:

• Holiday Greeting Cards: City Harvest delivers food to over 400 community food programs serving thousands more New Yorkers a day than before the pandemic. Our volunteers wrote holiday greeting cards to send to City Harvest’s many partners. 
• Mini Mesh Bags: During the holiday season, City Harvest Repackers use thousands of mesh bags each day to pack fresh produce that will go into their trucks and be delivered to food pantries and community food programs across the five boroughs. Our volunteers helped make these bags which keeps costs down and ensures more money can be spent on emergency food.

In addition to our employees donating their time, Penguin Random House made a donation to City Harvest as part of the Repack to Give Back campaign, which will provide 200,000 pounds of produce and non-perishable goods to 384,000 families in need this holiday season.

Penguin Random House views sustainability as a core responsibility aligned with our mission to create books for everyone. As a part of this responsibility, we are committed to ensuring our company’s compliance with the EUDR by December 30, 2025.

To support this effort, we are working closely with our suppliers to ensure full compliance across our supply chain and have partnered with osapiens to enhance and streamline our due diligence process. Understanding the importance of compliance for our clients and customers, we are updating our systems and processes to ensure our products meet the high environmental standards of the regulation, including full traceability of paper sources.

Sustainability is central to our values. Through responsible sourcing and transparency, Penguin Random House aims to contribute to a more sustainable and deforestation-free future for the publishing industry.

NEW YORK, NY (2024)

On Thursday, May 30, 20 NYC-based Penguin Random House employees volunteered with the Madison Square Park Conservancy.  Volunteers engaged in some light physical activity and got in the weeds—both literally and figuratively—to plant hundreds of blooming plants in the park for visitors to enjoy. To learn more about Madison Square Park Conservancy, click here.

NEW YORK, NY (2024)

Penguin Random House volunteers ran this year’s Botanical Book Bike at Madison Square Park, choosing a children’s book from the bike and reading every half hour from 12pm – 2pm. During non-storytime periods, volunteers helped the Botanical Book Bike Associate (a Madison Square Park Conservancy staff member) answer general questions about the books, lending/borrowing procedure, and other inquiries. For more information about the Botanical Book Bike, click here.

NEW YORK, NY (2023)

Corporate Services and the Sustainability Subcommittee have formed a Zero Waste Task Force to execute on a long-term Zero Waste initiative for the company’s New York City office, rethinking how we reduce, divert, and dispose of waste that ends up on-site. Achieving zero waste means conserving all resources with responsible production, consumption, and reuse of materials with no discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health. We have been tracking our waste diversion for 1745 Broadway on a monthly basis for over a year now to inform and quantify our waste diversion efforts. We diverted 167 tons of items from landfill primarily through recycling and donation programs in the first 12 months of tracking.

Since 2009, PRH has been a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) SmartWay Transport Partnership, an innovative collaboration between the EPA and the freight industry designed to increase energy efficiency while significantly reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution.
When carrier capacity fluctuates, the Transportation Department focuses on securing the best resources to move our freight, including utilizing freight carriers who are considered best in class. Volume shifts and capacity constraints during 2021 (the latest EPA data set year) required working with a vast array of carriers which slightly decreased our overall percentage of SmartWay carrier miles, but we maintained our status as a SmartWay Partner.

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)

U.S. (2022)

At our warehouses in the U.S., we are working to minimize the use of plastic filler inside our outbound cartons. In our Crawfordsville, IN, Hampstead, MD, Reno, NV and Westminster, MD facilities, we are using 100% curbside recyclable paper filler inside our loose cartons. The innovative shape of the paper padding provides a more sustainable option, while still protecting our books. We have ten paper cushioning machines to produce carton filler packaging in two of our distribution centers, with plans to add more in Crawfordsville, IN, and Westminster, MD. We are aiming to reduce plastic filler by 90% by the end of 2023. 

GERMANY (2022)

In Germany, our environmental team organized a selection of events and campaigns for Penguin Random House parent company Berteslmann’s Content Alliance to discuss water as a resource and habitat. More than 20 colleagues took action and cleared waste from our office building. The Random House Audio team also produced a new climate podcast exploring the connection between human rights and water, alongside experts.