This was the exact question the Portuguese Publishing and Bookselling Association (APEL) answered during the latest edition of Book 2.0 event hosted in Lisbon. The idea was simple. For books to be truly sustainable the full supply chain needs to be working together to rapidly decarbonize. But it is difficult to see how actions being taken across the supply chain were making tangible carbon reductions. To do this, we proposed to use a carbon footprint study to give an initial estimate of the initial overall carbon impact of the Portuguese general publishing sector.  The data would be supplemented by qualitative interviews to help identify areas where collective action could drive action and lay the foundation for a roadmap across the sector.
What did we learn?
The first thing the study tells us is an overall number. In 2023, we estimated that the general Portuguese publishing market generated just under 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.  This is around 0.017% of Portugal’s overall annual carbon emissions. To put this into further context, it means that estimate an average book produced and sold in Portugal has around 555 grams of carbon per book. This is roughly the equivalent of a driving 5km down the road in a new passenger car or streaming your latest series for around 15 hours. This tells us three important things:
  • Publishing in Portugal is not a highly intensive carbon industry and is not a significant driver of carbon emissions within Portugal. The biggest impact of publishing remains in providing the platforms to inspire, education and inform around the actions needed to address climate change.
  • Action is already happening across the supply chain. The common assumption is that a paperback book has an average of 1kg of carbon per book. This study suggests that the number in Portugal is much less. Some off this can be attributed to actions such as the use of efficient paper manufacturing and electrification of distribution.
  • Being a small market means you can be agile. Smaller publishing markets recognize the ethical responsibility to act and in countries like Portugal can take an innovative approach to creating an overall baseline and setting up reporting that can help identify collective actions to monitor and drive further progress.
But the picture is not all perfect. Like all markets and industries, carbon data remains difficult. Often carbon data is unavailable, outdated or can’t be shared. Studies such as this one, provides a methodology as a starting point for everyone in the sector to understand the reporting maturity and collectively build trust to share and report on this data in the future.
The study also showed the important role publishers can play. For the Portuguese market most of the emissions embedded in the book supply chain are associated with actual production of the book – things like paper, printing and other materials like the inks, bindings and glue. But what the numbers don’t show is that publishers have a lot of indirect impact in the supply chain. Decisions around the book format, print runs and paper type are driven by publishers and editorial teams and effect emissions associated with book production. Helping to identify future prioritization of actions.
One effective tool to translate these organizational level actions to a product level and quantify the carbon impact on individual book level. This can help publishers, authors and readers take climate friendly decisions today on books that will enter and circulate in the market for many years into the future.  While carbon labels might still be a way off into the future, new tools and prototypes are under development that can calculate the impact of an individual book working for all types of publishers.
The approach taken in this study is just one of the many ways trade associations can help to start a dialogue around the carbon impact of their national publishing markets while also gaining a better understanding of the data reporting abilities across the book supply chain.
See the Book 2.0 session on Spotify and YouTube