Sustainability and the Book
Reducing waste while growing profits
The many moving parts
of the publishing supply chain result in as much as 40% waste, an
incredible statistic given the marginal profits the average title earns
for a publisher. The cost of paper and printing is merely the tip of
the iceberg. Next comes the cost of transporting the books to
distributors then to retailers, an important consideration in a time of
unstable fuel costs. Unsold books get shipped back to distributors and
publishers and there's always the cost of warehousing books in
warehouses with 25-foot-high ceilings, stacked to the rafters with
crates and boxes of unsold inventory. Then there's the final
destruction of titles deemed obsolete, requiring still more energy as
the books are pulped and recycled.
The print-on-demand model for
books limits the resources required for the first printing, which can
still be digital in many cases. The lower initial print runs reduces
distribution costs and has a substantial cascading effect on waste and
other transportation costs. Furthermore, as a publisher's inventory
shifts from being physical to digital (atoms versus bits, as MIT's
Nicholas Negroponte would say) warehousing and inventory management
costs drop dramatically as do those for final destruction because fewer
copies of any given title have been produced. With fewer resources used
at every step of the supply chain, digital book production has an
especially long-term effect on environmental sustainability.
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Océ helps the people who make our world. Companies everywhere use Océ technical documentation systems in manufacturing, architecture, engineering and construction. Each week, high-speed Océ printing systems produce millions of transaction documents such as bank statements and utility bills. And in offices around the world, people use Océ professional document systems to keep the wheels of business and government turning. Océ is also at work in publishing on demand, newspaper production and wide format color for spectacular display graphics. It all helps our professional customers go 'Beyond the Ordinary' in printing and document management.
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