Every book has an environmental footprint. This is uncomfortable to say as someone who loves books and whose livelihood depends on making and selling them. But pretending otherwise would be dishonest, and honesty about where we are is the only way to figure out where we should go.

The publishing industry produces roughly 2.2 billion printed books per year worldwide. Each of those books requires paper, ink, energy, water, and transportation. The paper comes from trees. The ink contains petroleum-based chemicals. The printing presses run on electricity. The finished books travel by truck, ship, and airplane to warehouses, bookstores, and homes. And a significant percentage of those books, roughly 25-30% by some estimates, are never sold. They are returned to publishers and, in many cases, pulped or remaindered.

I want to walk through the environmental costs of publishing with specificity, acknowledge where the industry has improved, explain what we at ScrollWorks Media are doing, and be honest about the trade-offs that remain unresolved.

Paper and Forests

Paper is the most visible environmental cost of a physical book, so let me start there.

A standard paperback novel uses about 2-3 pounds of paper. The paper industry in North America and Europe has, over the past two decades, made genuine progress on sustainability. Most major paper mills now source fiber from managed forests or tree farms rather than old-growth timber. Certifications like FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) provide some assurance that paper production follows environmental standards.

The word “some” in that sentence is doing real work. Certification systems are imperfect. Auditing is inconsistent. Chain of custody can be difficult to verify, especially when paper crosses multiple international borders before reaching a printing press. And even well-managed tree farms are monocultures that support less biodiversity than natural forests. The paper industry has gotten better, but “better than it was” is not the same as “good.”

Recycled paper is part of the answer, but it introduces its own complications. Recycled paper often has a slightly different texture and color than virgin fiber paper, which some publishers resist for aesthetic reasons. The de-inking process used in recycling requires chemicals and generates waste. And the supply of high-quality recycled fiber is limited; there is simply not enough post-consumer paper stock to meet the industry’s needs if everyone switched to recycled simultaneously.

At ScrollWorks, our current standard is FSC-certified paper for all our print editions. We have experimented with recycled-content paper for some titles and found the results acceptable for most formats. We use 30% post-consumer recycled content as our baseline and are working toward 50%. The cost premium for certified and recycled paper runs about 10-15% above conventional stock, which we absorb rather than passing on to readers.

Printing and Energy

Modern offset printing is more energy-efficient than it was twenty years ago, but it still requires substantial electricity and generates waste. The printing process involves plate-making, ink application, drying (often using gas-fired ovens), trimming, and binding. Each step consumes energy and produces some combination of waste paper, chemical byproducts, and emissions.

Digital printing, which is increasingly common for shorter print runs, has a different environmental profile. It eliminates the plate-making step and reduces setup waste, which makes it more efficient for runs under 1,000 copies. But digital printing uses toner rather than traditional ink, and toner cartridges contain plastics and chemicals that require careful disposal. The per-unit energy consumption of digital printing is also higher than offset for large runs, so the environmental advantage depends on scale.

Print-on-demand (POD) technology has changed the equation significantly. Instead of printing 5,000 copies upfront and hoping they all sell, a publisher can print one copy at a time, only when an order comes in. This eliminates overproduction almost entirely, which is a major environmental win. The trade-off is that POD books tend to be printed closer to the point of sale, which can mean different (and sometimes lower-quality) printers, and the per-unit cost is higher.

We use a hybrid model at ScrollWorks. For titles where we are confident in demand, like Bitcoin for Absolute Beginners by Alexander Hawthorne, we do offset print runs of a size calibrated to sell through within 12-18 months. For less predictable titles, we use POD through our distribution partners. This minimizes waste while keeping books available. It is not a perfect system, but it is a significant improvement over the old model of printing large runs and pulping the leftovers.

The Overproduction Problem

Overproduction is the publishing industry’s dirtiest environmental secret, and nobody talks about it enough.

Here is how the traditional model works. A publisher prints a large initial run (say, 10,000 copies) to achieve economies of scale on per-unit costs. The books ship to a warehouse, then to bookstores. Bookstores have the right to return unsold copies for credit. Returns in the book industry average around 25-30%, though they can be much higher for individual titles.

What happens to returned books? Some are resold through remainder channels at steep discounts. Some are donated. And some, particularly mass-market paperbacks, are simply destroyed. The covers are stripped off and returned to the publisher as proof of destruction, and the coverless books go to recycling (at best) or landfill (at worst).

The numbers are staggering. The U.S. book industry alone produces hundreds of millions of copies per year that are never read by anyone. They are manufactured, shipped, shelved, unshelved, shipped back, and destroyed. The carbon footprint of this cycle, paper production, printing energy, two-way shipping, disposal, is enormous and almost entirely unnecessary.

The returns system persists because of inertia and because it benefits certain parties (bookstores get to order aggressively without risk). But it is environmentally indefensible, and the industry knows it. Some publishers have experimented with non-returnable terms, offering deeper discounts to bookstores in exchange for final-sale arrangements. This shifts the risk to booksellers, who understandably resist, but it would dramatically reduce waste if adopted more widely.

As a small publisher, we have more flexibility here. Our relationships with booksellers are direct enough that we can have honest conversations about order quantities. When a bookstore orders 20 copies of a title and we think 12 is more realistic, we say so. This does not always make us popular, but it means our return rate is well below the industry average, which means fewer books are printed for no purpose.

Shipping and Distribution

Books are heavy. A box of twenty hardcovers weighs about 30 pounds. Moving millions of these boxes around the country and around the world requires a lot of fuel.

The typical journey of a printed book looks something like this: from printing press (often in China or the eastern United States) to a publisher’s warehouse, then to a distributor’s warehouse, then to a bookstore or directly to a consumer. If the book does not sell, it makes the return trip: bookstore to distributor to publisher. This back-and-forth shipping is one of the most carbon-intensive aspects of the publishing supply chain.

The globalization of book printing has made this worse. Many publishers print books in China because printing costs are significantly lower there. But shipping containers of books across the Pacific Ocean adds weeks of transit time and a substantial carbon footprint. A book printed in Shenzhen and sold in Portland has traveled roughly 6,000 miles by sea before reaching a bookshelf.

We print domestically whenever we can. Our primary printer is in the eastern United States, and we use POD services with print locations across the country to minimize shipping distances. The cost is higher per unit than printing overseas, but the environmental and supply chain benefits justify it. Domestic printing also means faster turnaround times, which lets us print smaller quantities more frequently, further reducing waste.

Online retail has complicated the picture. When a reader orders a single book from an online retailer, that book is typically packed in a corrugated cardboard box (with plastic air pillows or paper fill), loaded onto a delivery truck, and driven to their door. The last-mile delivery of individual books is remarkably carbon-intensive per unit. Buying from a local bookstore, where one delivery truck serves hundreds of customers, is almost always the more environmental choice.

Ebooks and Their Hidden Costs

The obvious response to all of this is: read ebooks. No paper. No shipping. No overproduction. Problem solved, right?

Not exactly. Ebooks have environmental costs too, though they are less visible and harder to measure.

An e-reader device requires mining of rare earth minerals, energy-intensive manufacturing, shipping from the factory (almost always in Asia), and eventually disposal as electronic waste. The lifecycle environmental impact of a single Kindle has been estimated at roughly equivalent to 20-50 printed books, depending on the study and assumptions used. If you read more than 50 books on your e-reader before replacing it, you come out ahead environmentally. If you replace your device every two years and only read a dozen books per year, the calculus is less clear.

Then there are the server farms. Ebooks live in the cloud, and the cloud is not weightless. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water for cooling. Every time you download an ebook or sync your reading progress, a small amount of energy is consumed at a data center somewhere. Individually, these transactions are trivial. At the scale of millions of readers, they add up.

The honest answer is that ebooks are probably better for the environment than printed books for heavy readers, and probably worse for light readers who also need to buy a device. Neither format is zero-impact. The most environmentally friendly book is one that already exists: borrowed from a library, bought secondhand, or shared among friends.

What the Industry Is Doing

The publishing industry has made progress on sustainability, and I want to acknowledge that progress before talking about where it falls short.

The Book Industry Environmental Council (now part of the Book Industry Study Group) has developed guidelines for environmental reporting. Major publishers including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins publish sustainability reports and have set emissions reduction targets. FSC certification has become widespread. The use of soy-based inks (which have lower volatile organic compound emissions than petroleum inks) has increased substantially.

Print-on-demand technology, as I mentioned, has reduced overproduction for many titles. Digital-first publishing models allow publishers to gauge demand before committing to large print runs. And the growth of ebook and audiobook formats means that a larger share of reading happens without any physical product at all.

But the industry’s sustainability efforts remain uneven and, in some areas, performative. Many publishers tout FSC certification while continuing to overprint. Sustainability reports focus on what has improved while glossing over what has not. The fundamental structural issue, the returns system that incentivizes overproduction, remains largely unaddressed by the major publishers.

What We Are Doing at ScrollWorks

I want to be specific about our own practices, because vague sustainability claims are easy and accountability is hard.

Paper: FSC-certified, minimum 30% post-consumer recycled content. We are working to reach 50% by the end of next year. We track paper sourcing by title and can tell you where the fiber for any of our books came from.

Printing: domestic printers only, with a preference for facilities that use renewable energy. Our primary printer sources 40% of its electricity from wind and solar. We use soy-based inks for all interior printing.

Print runs: calibrated to sell through within 12-18 months. We use POD for backlist titles and for initial publication of titles with uncertain demand. Our return rate last year was 8%, compared to the industry average of roughly 25%.

Shipping: we consolidate shipments whenever possible and use ground freight rather than air. For direct-to-consumer sales through our website, we use recyclable packaging and have eliminated plastic fill materials entirely, replacing them with recycled paper padding.

Offsets: we purchase verified carbon offsets for our estimated annual emissions from printing and shipping. I will be honest that I have mixed feelings about offsets. They are better than nothing, but they can also be a way of buying permission to continue polluting. We treat them as a bridge measure while we work on reducing actual emissions, not as a permanent solution.

Ebooks and audiobooks: we publish all our titles in digital formats, including The Cartographer’s Dilemma and Echoes of Iron, and we encourage readers to consider digital when the format suits them. We do not push digital over print, because we believe physical books have value beyond their content, but we want the option to be available and affordable.

What Readers Can Do

Individual consumer choices are not going to solve the publishing industry’s environmental problems. Structural changes in production, distribution, and the returns system will have far more impact than any number of individual readers choosing to buy used. But reader behavior does matter at the margins, and there are choices worth making.

Use your local library. Every book borrowed from a library is a book that did not need to be printed for you individually. Library copies serve dozens of readers over their lifetime. On a per-read basis, library books are the most environmentally efficient way to read.

Buy from local bookstores rather than ordering individual copies online. The per-unit shipping footprint of a book that traveled in a box with 200 others to a bookstore is far lower than a book that was individually packed and delivered to your door.

Buy used when you can. The secondhand book market is large and healthy, and buying a used copy has essentially zero additional environmental impact beyond the shipping.

When you are done with a book, pass it along. Give it to a friend, donate it to a library or thrift store, leave it in a Little Free Library. Every additional read a book gets extends the useful life of the resources that went into making it.

If you are a heavy reader (say, more than 30 books per year), an e-reader probably makes environmental sense, especially if you keep the device for several years. If you read fewer books and value the physical experience, printed books are fine, especially if you are buying from publishers who take their supply chain seriously.

The Honest Truth

Here is what I think, stripped of any PR considerations.

The publishing industry’s environmental impact is real but moderate compared to most manufacturing industries. Books are not fast fashion. They are not single-use plastics. They are durable goods that provide years of value. The average book emits roughly 7-8 kg of CO2 over its lifecycle, which is less than a round trip by car to the nearest city.

The biggest environmental problem in publishing is waste, specifically, the overproduction of books that nobody reads. Fixing the returns system and embracing print-on-demand for a larger share of titles would do more for the industry’s environmental footprint than any number of FSC certifications or carbon offset purchases.

As a small publisher, we have advantages: we can move faster, take more risks on new production methods, and maintain closer relationships with our supply chain. We are using those advantages to try to publish more responsibly. We are not perfect. We still use too much packaging. Our shipping is still too carbon-intensive. We still print books that do not sell as quickly as we hoped.

But we are trying, and we believe that transparency about our failures is more valuable than a polished sustainability brochure that glosses over the hard parts. The environmental cost of publishing is real. Addressing it requires honesty, investment, and a willingness to change practices that the industry has relied on for decades. We are committed to that process, even when it is uncomfortable.

The ScrollWorks Media editorial team is committed to reducing our environmental impact while continuing to publish books that matter. Learn more about our titles on our books page, or share your thoughts on publishing sustainability via our contact page.