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, covering 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. As our content becomes increasingly digital, we also have a growing technology-related supply chain.
Including environmental responsibility as a contract requirement defines the nature of the relationship that we seek to build with our suppliers. In our contracts, 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 climate 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 opportunities for our customers and readers to access our content digitally. Nevertheless, we expect that our use of paper will continue to be an important means for delivering our products.
We source paper primarily from North America and Scandinavia. Paper is a priority environmental issue for us. We:
- First adopted and publicly disclosed our environmental policy with regard to paper sourcing in 2003.
- Collect and map data on the forest of origin, certification systems applicable and recycled content for the papers we purchase;
- Talk about our guidelines with our key paper suppliers when we meet and as part of our contract discussions;
- Discuss our approach to paper purchasing with customers, environmental groups, investor analysts and other interested parties;
- Retain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain of custody certification allowing books to carry the FSC label for Dorling Kindersley and Penguin in the UK;
- Attained FSC chain of custody accreditation for our businesses in North America;
- Hold regular training sessions for our production teams around the world on both labour standards and environmental responsibility issues. We ran a session in 2011 with Penguin in the UK and Pearson North America reviewed its procedures as part of attaining FSC certification.
In addition to the standards we set ourselves through our paper purchasing guidelines, we also have a responsibility to use fewer resources where we can. This delivers both environmental benefits as well as cost savings.
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2011 vs. 2011 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metric tonnes of paper/£ million non-digital revenue | 105 | 87 | 84 | 77 | -27.0% |
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.
In 2010, we set a target to completely review our approach with Pearson International piloting a new process. The methodology adopted by Pearson International extended the reach by including all print suppliers exceeding £100,000 or local equivalent in value of product manufactured for us. This increased the number of printers included in the print register by over 40%. In addition, we collected further detail on inks, solvents and volatile organic chemicals.
This year, the enhanced Pearson International model was extended to Penguin and is being incorporated in the roll out of the new Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) system across Pearson.
The current focus is to transition the enhanced reporting into the VRM system and as such a detailed global audit for 2012 on 2011 performance using the previous system is not available. Detailed below is the latest report and covers the environmental performance of our printers covers the FT, Pearson in education and Penguin, and is global in scope. 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 |
||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | |
| Water | 87 | 88 | 89 | 89 | 93 | 92 | 76 | 76 | 78 | 77 | 83 | 75 |
| Ink | 94 | 94 | 97 | 97 | 98 | 94 | 79 | 80 | 79 | 79 | 83 | 78 |
| Solvents | 90 | 88 | 93 | 93 | 98 | 93 | 85 | 83 | 85 | 84 | 89 | 79 |
| Alcohol | 89 | 81 | 90 | 92 | 92 | 87 | 77 | 74 | 83 | 85 | 86 | 77 |
| Energy | 90 | 89 | 93 | 92 | 97 | 93 | 84 | 84 | 86 | 85 | 90 | 87 |
| Waste Production | 94 | 94 | 97 | 97 | 98 | 96 | 92 | 91 | 90 | 90 | 92 | 88 |
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 operating companies continue to monitor reduction targets for VOCs and the indicators in the table above. 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.
We encourage our printers to introduce and monitor reduction targets for VOCs and the indicators in the table above. Following a review process to assess use of ink and solvents used by one of our businesses, a new imprint was launched.
During 2011, Pearson people undertook visits to existing and potential printers in the US, the UK, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and Latin America. 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 continues to be an important supplier to Pearson. Environmental initiatives adopted by the company include:
- Use of low-VOC inks and solvents to reduce emissions to air. Since 1987, R.R. Donnelley has reduced emissions by more that 80%. The company is currently looking at technology to enable ink recycling complementing work on the use of vegetable and soy-based inks
- Investment in energy efficient equipment designed to save an amount of energy equal to 9 million gallons of gasoline every year over alternative designs. This equates to the amount of gas used annually by nearly 10,000 cars
- 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
Our books are produced around the world, requiring shipment from the printers to our distribution centres. We outsource road distribution and shipment of our products to third party carriers. We have worked with suppliers on consolidating shipments to maximise container loads and monitor environmental performance as part of the contractual arrangements.
During 2010, we developed inventory management performance metrics covering all book businesses worldwide. For 2011, we introduced an internal reporting process by facility and introduced a new metric around book-gifting.