Going beyond our direct impacts
Responsible purchasing
Pearson purchases in excess of £2 billion of goods and services from suppliers around the world each year. In 2001, Pearson made a series of commitments to extend its positive influence across its supply chain. These commitments formed part of our response to the UN Global Compact and covered labour standards and human rights as well as environmental responsibility. This section describes the progress we have made in linking environmental responsibility to our procurement strategy.
Our impact
Managing the environmental impacts arising from our supply chain was first identified as a priority in the 2002 Pearson Environmental Review. This focus has continued ever since.
Pearson is a major purchaser of paper for books, newspapers and magazines. We also have contracts with printers around the world to produce our books, magazines and newspapers as well as with distributors and shippers to bring our products to market. We believe that our major environmental impacts are supply chain related, particularly relating to the supply of paper, printing and also to distribution.
During 2002, we contacted 16,000 of our suppliers describing how our environmental policies affect our purchasing decisions and introducing them to our commitments under the Global Compact. In 2006, we wrote again to our top 850 global suppliers, re-emphasizing our commitment to the UN Global Compact and our Code of Business Conduct.
Including environmental responsibility as a contract requirement defines the nature of the relationship that we seek to build with our suppliers. It is in the contract that we outline the standards of performance that we expect from our suppliers as well as the commitments we make as a responsible purchaser. The standards we set our suppliers reflect the standards that we set for ourselves.
Pearson introduced specific environmental clauses for inclusion in key contracts agreed from 2002 onwards. These clauses were reviewed following supplier feedback and the introduction by Pearson of a Code of Business Conduct. These clauses are now part of our standard negotiations for new contracts and for existing contracts on renewal. Many of our key contracts run for several years, so the process of introducing these clauses is ongoing.
In many instances, legislative and regulatory controls along with industry and company initiatives have produced high standards of integrity among suppliers. Our approach seeks to reinforce the importance of high standards of responsibility and integrity.
In line with our commitment to climate neutrality, we have started the process of exploring our product carbon footprints. Where possible, we will work with industry partners to understand this complex area.
Paper
Our books, newspapers and magazines all use paper. We lead the way in investing in new technology to provide paperless opportunities for our customers and readers to access our products. Nevertheless, we expect that our use of paper will continue to grow as a medium for delivering our products.
The amount of paper we use is determined by the news agenda of the day, our advertisers, the decisions taken by our authors, and the number of products we commission, print and sell. We therefore believe it is unrealistic to set targets to reduce total paper usage. We believe that our role should be to incorporate environmental considerations into our paper purchasing processes. Paper is a priority issue within our wider programme of considering the environmental impact of our supply chain.
Pearson:
- First adopted and publicly disclosed its environmental policy with regard to paper sourcing in 2003. This policy was updated last year.
- Collects and maps data on the forest of origin, certification systems applicable and recycled content for the papers we purchase
- Held a series of training sessions for our production teams around the world on both labour standards and environmental responsibility issues
- Worked with members of the WWF Forest and Trade Network since joining in 2004 on responsible paper sourcing practice and disseminated the ideas to our production teams around the world
- Helped found Publishers database for Responsible Environmental Paper Sourcing (PREPS), an industry collaboration to map the environmental characteristics of paper. PREPS was initially a UK initiative, however Pearson businesses in North America have become the first in that region to adopt the PREPS approach.
- Communicated and reinforced our guidelines to our key paper suppliers through direct dialogue
Each year, we publish a report outlining our paper purchasing activities and performance and make this publicly available through this website.
Printing
Less than 0.5 per cent of Pearson products are printed by our own operations. We have two small digital print operations in the US. These operations provide short-run & print-on-demand products, typically custom client applications. As these two direct controlled operations are not materially significant for Pearson operations, we do not consider emissions to water as an issue for our own company reporting.
However, emissions to water are an issue facing our third-party printer partners. As such, we see our responsibility as being to exert a positive environmental influence over the practices of our printers.
In 2003, we first set up a central register of key paper suppliers and out-sourced printing relationships. This register provides Pearson with a picture of the environmental performance of its printers. The register includes over 90% of our printers by value.
Our process of surveying the environmental performance of our printers covers the FT, Pearson Education and Penguin in Europe, North America and the Far East. The survey covers:
- Whether the printer uses a recognised system for environmental management
- Take-up of direct-to-plate technology. Pearson is committed to use printers with this facility for new title production as this reduces the use of silver film.
- Measurement and reduction policies for water, ink, solvents, alcohol, energy and waste.
| Indicator | %age of printers that measure impact |
%age of printers with targets to reduce usage |
%age of printers that measure impact |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2008 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2008 | |
| Water | 86% | 87% | 88% | 89% | 89% | 57% | 76% | 76% | 78% | 77% |
| Ink | 95% | 94% | 94% | 97% | 97% | 71% | 79% | 80% | 79% | 79% |
| Solvents | 91% | 90% | 88% | 93% | 93% | 76% | 85% | 83% | 85% | 84% |
| Alcohol | 67% | 89% | 81% | 90% | 92% | 67% | 77% | 74% | 83% | 85% |
| Energy | 81% | 90% | 89% | 93% | 92% | 71% | 84% | 84% | 86% | 85% |
| Waste Production | 95% | 94% | 94% | 97% | 97% | 95% | 92% | 91% | 90% | 90% |
We continue to be concerned that the release of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) which are present in inks and solvents are managed effectively and where possible reduced.
We encourage our printers to introduce and monitor reduction targets for VOCs and the indicators in the table above. The findings from this survey provide the basis for production teams to discuss environmental impact with suppliers. Following a review process to assess use of ink and solvents used by one of our businesses, a new imprint was launched.
Our production departments continue to use a single group knowledge management system incorporating both environmental and labour standards data together with commercial data.
During 2008, Pearson people undertook visits to existing and potential printers in Australia, China, India, Japan and Mexico, and in several European countries, including Germany, Italy, Spain and Slovakia. These visits provided an opportunity for Pearson to review performance standards in areas including environmental responsibility, health & safety, labour standards and human rights. The findings and issues identified have been discussed with our printers and are being managed as part of our normal commercial relationships.
Case Study
R.R. Donnelley
R.R. Donnelley is an important supplier to Pearson. Environmental initiatives adopted by the company include:
- Use of low-VOC inks and solvents to reduce emissions to air
- Investment in energy efficient equipment
- Use of computer-to-plate technology, eliminating wastewater discharge related to film processing
- A range of packaging reduction initiatives, including the use of shared pallets.
Distribution
It is normal practice for our businesses to outsource distribution and shipment of our products to third party carriers.
Shipping
Our books are produced around the world, requiring shipment from the printers to our Distribution Centres. Maximizing the container load is an important measure of environmental efficiency. A review in 2005 of the performance of different parts of the business identified an opportunity to consolidate shipments and thus maximise container loads.
Working with World Transport Agency (WTA), our main shipping agency we established a process in 2006 to measure the carbon footprint associated with the shipping of our books across 12 key routes covering over 90% of books shipped. In order to calculate the carbon footprint, WTA worked with shipping companies and the Carbon Neutral Company to develop new methodologies to measure carbon intensity through a tonnes CO2 per Container measure. Pearson was the first company to engage with WTA to apply this methodology to our shipments. We set a target for 2008 to improve container utilization by a further 5% across our key routes. We will report on progress on this indicator later in the second half of 2009.
Road
Pearson has very few commercial vehicles of its own. The main road distributors in the UK and Europe are DHL for books and TNT for the Financial Times.
In the US, we similarly outsource distribution, with FedEX being the main distributor. These distributors have environmental policies and use modern fleets of vehicles. We monitor environmental performance as part of the contractual arrangements.