Our reports, documents and tools share what we have learnt about better book supply chains.
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.
A credible supplier due diligence process begins with assessing and segmenting your suppliers based on risk. This risk tool has been developed to help you do just this. The tool assesses both country level risk and supplier level risk for both environmental and labour rights/health and safety, and you can use it to assess risk across 15 direct supplier types in every country.
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.
The Labour and Environment Risk Tool was updated in March 2024
This document provides detailed guidance for publishers to calculate GHG emissions in their own operations and upstream and downstream value chains. It includes methodologies and examples consistent with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard, for calculating emissions of each Scope and Category.
We are looking forward to being back at the beautiful London Wetland Centre (Queen Elizabeth Walk, London SW13 9WT) for our annual Seminar, with the theme Transparency: an Open Book. We'll explore the increasing expectations on companies to gather, share and disclose information on their sustainability impacts across the value chain. There will also be opportunities to catch-up and network with representatives from the publishers, pulp & paper mills, printers, and NGOs involved in the BCP.
This is the first report of its kind, providing aggregated information about the publishing industry’s environmental performance. This includes location-based GHG emission intensity factors, at country, regional and continental level.
The report has been informed by data collected through mill and supplier Environmental Questionnaires and covers a range of environmental topics, from GHG emissions and energy intensity to water and waste management. The report is full of useful information, and we’d like to highlight a few key points of interest:
*The calculations on page 6 of this report were updated on 07/12/22 *
This tool assesses species risk for tree species commonly used in paper-making, based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices.
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.
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. In 2022, we updated the Design Guide to include emissions factor data for five key materials and processes.
January 2024 update: the The German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) Sustainability Working Group (IG Nachhaltigkeit) asked the Book Chain Project for permission to translate the Design Guide into German. They have done so, and have made minor changes and edits where they feel it fits their German-speaking audience. We have made this version of the Design Guide available too.
After two years of lockdowns, isolation and online meetings, we are so excited to finally meet in person with our US-based publishers, mills, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
This year's theme is "Two Sides to the Story". We often think of the industry's impacts on sustainability challenges, but are increasingly also facing the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and other issues as an industry.
The Seminar will be an informal afternoon with guest speaker presentations and opportunities for networking and catching up. We will be sharing more details on the agenda in the following weeks.
Attendance is by invitation for the stakeholders involved with the Book Chain Project. Please get in touch if you'd like to attend.
This tool assesses the biodiversity risk of the location of the sources that made up paper brands, based on Conservation International Biodiversity Hotspots, Alliance for Zero Extinction sites and NatureMap Forest Biodiversity Intactness Index.
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.
Open letter signed by Production Directors of 18 Publishers participating in the Book Chain Project, requesting paper and print suppliers to support the measurement and reduction of the environmental footprint of the global publishing industry by providing information through the Book Chain Project's Environmental Questionnaire.
This is an excel spreadsheet with all the questions covered by the Environmental Questionnaire. While we have added guidance and highlight conditionals (e.g. further questions appear based on previous input), it is impossible to build all of the interactive features of the online EQ into excel and therefore some features are missing (e.g. breakdown match total checks). You can use this excel to gather the EQ data and then enter it into the system in one go.
这是包含环境问卷所有问题的excel版本。我们标注出了填写条件（比如根据前面题目回答出现的下一题）。此版本和线上版本格式不完全一致，比如有的下拉菜单不存在。你可以使用此表去收集环境问卷的数据，然后统一填写到系统上。请注意，问卷的成功提交以系统上英文填写的版本为准。点击下列文本框选择“中文”，点击“DOWNLOAD”下载中文版本。
This is an excel spreadsheet with all the questions covered by the Environmental Questionnaire. While we have added guidance and highlight conditionals (e.g. further questions appear based on previous input), it is impossible to build all of the interactive features of the online EQ into excel and therefore some features are missing (e.g. breakdown match total checks). You can use this excel to gather the EQ data and then enter it into the system in one go.
这是包含环境问卷所有问题的excel版本。我们标注出了填写条件（比如根据前面题目回答出现的下一题）。此版本和线上版本格式不完全一致，比如有的下拉菜单不存在。你可以使用此表去收集环境问卷的数据，然后统一填写到系统上。请注意，问卷的成功提交以系统上英文填写的版本为准。点击下列文本框选择“中文”，点击“DOWNLOAD”下载中文版本。
This document critically evaluates the robustness of the two main forest certification systems – FSC and PEFC – in ten countries. We started by building up an overview of country-specific forest risks for each country based on reputable sources such as Chatham House, Preferred by Nature and Earthsight. We then assessed the applicable FSC and PEFC standards against the country risk profile, highlighting key gaps.
The countries included are: Brazil, Czech Republic, Hungary, Indonesia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
We recommend that this document is used to understand the level of certification robustness in priority countries, as a basis for setting sourcing policies based on a company's risk appetite.
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.
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%.