Embedding Sustainability Into Everyday Business: A Recap of GBA at ConTEXT London 2025

On March 10, 2025, the Green Book Alliance (GBA) had the opportunity to present at ConTEXT London, an essential industry gathering that brought together key stakeholders from across the book supply chain. ConTEXT continues to foster critical discussions around environmental and economic issues in publishing, from shifting consumer habits to evolving regulations and supply chain disruptions.

The GBA-facilitated session, Beyond the Baseline: Moving Ahead with Carbon Calculation, featured insights from Brian O’Leary (BISG), Karina Urquhart (BIC), and Lauren Stewart (BookNet Canada). Our discussion focused on the increasing necessity for publishers to move beyond compliance-driven sustainability efforts and toward proactive carbon accounting and reduction strategies. With regulatory pressures such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) consuming much of publishers’ attention, our session underscored the importance of embedding sustainability into everyday business operations, ensuring that the industry is not just reacting to legislation but actively driving long-term environmental responsibility.

Key Takeaways from ConTEXT

1. The Need for Carbon Calculation Tools – There is a growing consensus that publishers must be equipped with standardized tools to measure their carbon footprints, both for operations and individual book products. GBA is actively working on making available tools that will help publishers track their carbon emissions, supporting industry-wide transparency and accountability.

2. Shifting from Compliance to Strategy – While compliance with regulations like EUDR is essential, publishers must also recognize the broader need for integrating sustainability in publishing operations. Our discussion highlighted how sustainability fluency should become as ingrained in publishing workflows as financial and production planning.

3. Industry Appetite for Sustainability Leadership – Feedback from ConTEXT attendees reinforced that the industry values structured sustainability initiatives and looks to organizations like GBA for leadership. A particular highlight was BookNet Canada’s efforts to measure its own carbon footprint since 2020, demonstrating a model from which other organizations are eager to learn.

4. Collaboration is Key – Events like ConTEXT provide invaluable spaces for industry stakeholders to share experiences and develop collective solutions. GBA remains committed to supplementing these in-person gatherings with webinars, meetings, and workshops to ensure sustainability remains at the forefront of industry discussions.

   
   

Moving Forward with Sustainability

We are grateful for the opportunity to engage with industry leaders and appreciate HP and Ashley Gordon’s efforts in fostering meaningful dialogue through this event.

We encourage industry stakeholders to reach out to us with their sustainability innovations and challenges—collaboration and industry buy-in are vital for lasting change. Together, we can ensure that sustainability becomes an intrinsic part of publishing’s future.

For those who missed our session at ConTEXT, we invite you to join us at the upcoming GBA event at Frankfurt 2025, where we will further explore these topics and share updates on our ongoing projects. More details can be found here.

Sustainability at BISG

By Brian O'Leary

Interest in—and awareness of—the need for more sustainable practices is growing in the United States. Although other markets, including the United Kingdom and the European Union, are more advanced in their consideration of sustainability goals, the global nature of many businesses means that international trends are affecting US organizations as well.

Various companies and nonprofit organizations have started sustainability efforts. Some are well established, dating to the mid-2000s. At the same time, overall knowledge of the basic components of sustainability—the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), carbon footprints, and scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions, as examples—is limited in the US book industry. More can be done to build awareness, educate, and foster action around sustainability in the US market.

At the moment, the North American market is challenged to make sense of what is happening globally with respect to sustainability. There is a lot of data and not enough actionable information related to reporting requirements, deadlines, and expectations for progress against multiple sustainability targets. At BISG, we’re trying to help the industry develop that information. Overall, our sustainability working group has six ongoing objectives:

• Identify and address opportunities to create more uniform (standard) approaches to collecting and reporting data related to sustainability efforts

• Coordinate with other US and international sustainability efforts, building relationships within the group and across organizations

• Share information about work done to define and establish goals around sustainability

• Link available resources, like the SDGs, to book publishing supply chain activities, advising US organizations on current and emerging requirements. Consider resources like the Publishers Compact as a way to engage companies and individuals.

• Propose industry goals around critical metrics, such as CO2 equivalents

• Collect data that informs the industry about progress and opportunities relative to SDGs and other measures of sustainability

  
  

In 2025, we are focused on three near-term goals whose results will help interested organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere strengthen their approaches to sustainability. These goals include:

• Developing and implementing a one-year plan that demonstrates how a carbon calculation model can be adopted within an organization

• Delivering a business case for carbon data collection

• Collaborating with the BISG Supply Chain Committee and the Green Book Alliance for in-person opportunities to educate the industry around sustainability issues and opportunities at industry events (London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, BISG and BMI’s annual meetings, etc.)

  
  

The work to demonstrate how a carbon calculation model can be adopted within an organization is already underway. At its 2025 kickoff meeting in early February, BISG’s sustainability working group began a year-long “live testing” project to choose a carbon model, acquire the data needed to populate it for a set of publishing decisions, and then report on both what it found and areas where it might be struggling. We’ll take the lessons learned in 2025 and share them widely, so that other companies and organizations can learn from our successes (and from our mistakes!)

The business case for carbon data collection is still on the drawing board, with the goal of answering the perennial question: “Why should I do this?” We know there’s a need to move past the argument that “it’s the right thing to do”, offering concrete benefits that justify investments in carbon data collection. The live testing project will help us find some of those benefits.

Work is already underway to contribute to the Green Book Alliance, whose principals meet every other Monday to compare notes and plan projects. GBA recently participated in HP’s ConTEXT event on March 10, just ahead of the London Book Fair, and we’re already discussing the content of our Frankfurt sustainability event. Look for announcement on those and other initiatives, and sign up for our mailing list if you’re not already on it.

EUDR Resources for the Book Publishing Industry

EUDR came into effect on June 29, 2023, and is designed to ensure that products linked to deforestation or forest degradation are excluded from the EU market. It replaced the earlier European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR). EUDR has been postponed by a year - for medium and large organizations, compliance with EUDR will be required by December 30, 2025, and for smaller organizations by June 30, 2026.

What products are included?

The regulation targets commodities linked to issues of deforestation such as wood, cocoa, soy, coffee, rubber, and their derivatives like furniture, chocolate, and paper. The inclusion of printed matter like books, was not previously covered under EUTR.

Who is responsible for compliance and what are the consequences of non-compliance?

Non-compliance could lead to fines of up to 4% of the company's EU turnover, confiscation of goods, or exclusion from public contracts. Production areas must adhere to local social and environmental laws, and the onus is on the company placing the product on the EU market to ensure compliance. Companies must follow a specific due diligence process with transparent supply chain information.

How will compliance be monitored?

Regular inspections by national authorities are expected and companies should also prepare for scrutiny from private parties. Compliance now requires traceability from the tree's geolocation to the final printed product. For a book, this involves tracking the source of paper for text pages, endpapers, covers, and jackets. The regulation exempts 100% recycled materials from due diligence requirements, although mixed-source materials will still require documentation.

Resources

European Union

Implementation of the EU Deforestation Regulation

All the information about how to comply with EUDR.

EUDR Myths vs. Reality

Debunking myths around the EU Deforestation Regulation.

Where to Submit Due Diligence Statements

'The Information System' is a Registry of Due Diligence Statements and a specialized online tool that streamlines the creation of due diligence statements within your supply chains.

Book Industry Communication (BIC)

Introduction to the European Union Deforestation Regulations

A short, high-level overview of EUDR.

• What this means for the book industry supply chain

• How is the geolocation data going to be traced and handled

• Who generates the certificates

CPI

Introduction to EUDR

CPI's step-by-step guide to understanding and complying with EUDR.

BookNet Canada, BISG and EDItEUR 

European Deforestation Regulation EUDR webinar

Graham Bell (EDItEUR) discusses the impact of EUDR:

• The responsibilities it places on publishers, distributors, and retailers both within and outside the European Union

• The need for data collection and record-keeping about the sources of raw materials used in the book industry

• How ONIX is used to communicate some of the key metadata required for compliance with the regulations

FSC

Six steps companies can take now to prepare for EUDR

EDItEUR

EDItEUR’s ONIX Implementation and Best Practice Guides

(download the document and search within the Guide for ‘EUDR’)