Our reports, documents and tools share what we have learnt about better book supply chains.
In keeping with the aims of the Book Chain Project, we have created the Design Guide to help all actors involved in the design decision making process to make informed decisions about the materials and / or processes they are using. The Design Guide covers a number of different materials and processes and scores them based on their environmental and health & safety or labour impact, as well as their recyclability.
The Book Chain Project provides a publishing industry Code of Conduct for labour and environmental standards. It states the publishers’ commitments to their suppliers and what they expect from their suppliers in return. The Code of Conduct is based on existing internationally-recognized Codes and Laws. Suppliers that do not already have an ethical audit can ask for a SMETA audit that is audited against this Code of Conduct.
The tool belongs to Carnstone but is freely available to download and use. Please do credit Carnstone Partners Ltd if you reproduce the results or methodology of the tool.
Find out more about how we use the tool to assess forest risk.
This report summarises the impact achieved by the Book Chain Project over the past 15 years. It traces the history of the Book Chain Project, from 3 separate tools to one collaborative project building better book supply chains; looks at our reach; summarises our work and impact across the 3 workstreams; describes our collaborations; and ends with a look at the future.
The high-profile clearance of the Amazon rainforest late last year and the Australian bushfires this year made headlines around the world, putting deforestation at the top of the agenda. Together with NGOs, investors are pushing for greater transparency and action on this issue from businesses through investor-led initiatives such as CDP. This document looks into the annual CDP reporting process and what is required of a company to be considered a leader in the CDP Forests questionnaire.
This document is sharing good practice from Chinese print suppliers on their experiences when restarting their operations after the Covid-19 lockdown. We know that each country will face unique challenges, but we thought it might be useful to share these insights as other factories across the world start to think about reopening or scaling up production. We've also included reference to some of the useful guidance that is emerging from organisations like the ILO.
Over the course of September 2019 to March 2020, Australia experienced bushfires that burned an unprecedented 12 million hectares of land, killed 33 people and one billion animals. The fires were the biggest in Australia’s history and will have unparalleled impacts that we are only just beginning to understand. The Australian Forest Products Association, an industry body, is urging the Australian government to salvage log in order to mitigate the severe impacts of the fire, however there is significant evidence showing the catastrophic impacts salvage logging can have. The decision on how to proceed is ongoing. Despite the size and disastrous nature of the bushfires, it is unlikely that they will have significant ramifications on the global pulp and paper industry as Australia exports only account for 3%.
This document outlines the Terms of Use for the stakeholders engaged in the BCP system; the participating Publishers, the Suppliers (printers and other suppliers) and the paper and integrated pulp & paper Mills. It also outlines access rights and the data management within the system by Carnstone.
This is the end of year report for the special project improving Health and Safety in print factories in China. The report summaries this year's activities, impact achieved and lessons learnt for the year ahead
In keeping with the aims of the Book Chain Project, we’ve produced this guide to help our publishers make informed decisions around the design, purchasing and production of their books, magazines and journals. It shares an overview of the situation today, looks at some of the common misconceptions, charts the new developments in this area, and presents good practice from other sectors.
Download the scoring tool we use to assess mill performance on responsible sourcing and environmental management. This information is fed back to the mills, alongside useful resources to drive improvement.
In 2018, The Book Chain Project began the first step towards deeper engagement with paper mills. We wanted to better understand how our mills manage responsible paper sourcing, to increase our efforts to halt illegal logging. To do this we developed our mill assessment process which allows us to set out our long-term expectations and start a dialogue. By identifying mills with the desire and intent to improve, the output from this initiative will help us better support their development. Download the document to find out more about why we started this initiative and the criteria we use to understand mill performance
These guides summarise the paper mills and latest forest news in each country. They also show the results of the Forest Risk Assessment which is the basis of our paper analysis in the Grading System.
In the face of rapidly changing reading habits what does the future hold for printed books? Will they still be around in ten years? And if so, how might they be made?
Since March 2013 businesses across Europe have been responding to the EU Timber Regulation; a law prohibiting illegal timber from appearing on the European market. We wanted to gauge the feeling across the retail and manufacturing sectors so, eight months on from the law’s introduction, we conducted a short survey to understand how companies were facing the new requirements. We presented the findings to the Chatham House Illegal Logging Update in February 2014. The results are summarised in our report Still Feeling Stumped?