by Peter Midgley 

Let’s face it, “green publishing” is a contradiction. Even the options we tout as alternatives to traditional print books, such as eBooks, have an environmental impact. However, this does not mean we shouldn’t make every effort to adopt more sustainable practices. So, what are Alberta publishers doing to make more sustainable choices? 

The most obvious place to start is also the most visible: paper. Every carbon calculator out there will tell you that the biggest environmental impact is paper. A  French study from 2017 notes that paper accounts for between 50 and 80% of the environmental cost of a book, so clearly talking about paper is important. 

The first thing that publishers can do, and that Alberta’s publishers already do, is to use paper that meets the standards approved by the Forest Stewardship Council. In terms of the FSC standards, this includes consultation with Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ensure free, prior, and informed consent; compliance with regulations of the International Labour Organization; and maintaining standards around species at risk and the use of pesticides. Only about 6% of Canada’s forests are privately owned; the rest are considered Crown Land and harvesting rights are controlled by federal and provincial governments, so requirements vary considerably across the country. How well compliance is monitored and enforced is of course an ongoing concern. 

Part of responsible publishing practice is to use recycled or postconsumer paper whenever possible. For the most part, Alberta publishers already do this; however, some books, especially textbooks that require colour images, cannot be printed on recycled paper. 

While the paper that gets used in publishing does consume resources, the books themselves are durable and have a relatively low post-production environmental cost. A book can be shared or lent out through a library service, reread, exchanged, resold, etc. without adding significantly to the environmental cost. An eBook, on the other hand, might save a forest from destruction, but it comes with its own environmental costs, such as mining to produce e-readers or the cost associated with storing ePubs on the web, which requires water to cool servers. And unlike a print book, an eBook uses resources every time the reading device is switched on. Digital publishing doesn’t make environmental concerns go away; it merely shifts the burden.

There are also alternatives to wood pulp paper, the industry standard, to consider. Like hemp paper. Hemp paper has been used since the earliest printing in China, and was used to print the Gutenberg Bible, a key text in the story of modern western printing and book publishing. Hemp was, and still is, used to produce cigarette paper and to print banknotes because it is more durable than wood pulp paper. In fact, wood pulp did not become the primary source of paper until the late nineteenth century, and the reason it did so remains the reason hemp paper is not widely used today. Hemp has to be cultivated, which drives up production costs; forests, by contrast, grow by themselves, so there is a lower production cost. Anyway, that’s the story the paper barons told, and they’re sticking to it even though we now know that forestry, too, brings its own production costs, as well as many other incalculable associated costs. Then there’s also the fact that hemp produces THC, which was, and remains, a banned substance in many parts of the world. (For the record, there are hemp varieties with low THC content…) 

Truth is, producing hemp paper is less extractive than commercial forests: 

•  Growing hemp consumes less water and a crop can be harvested in three to four months; as opposed to the decades it takes to grow and regrow a forest. 

• Paper needs cellulose to bind the fibres, and about 70% of the hemp plant is cellulose (compared to about 30% in trees). This means that we can use more of the hemp plant to make paper. 

• Hemp also contains less lignin, which has to be removed to make paper. While the lignin in wood pulp has to be removed using toxic chemicals, producers can use hydrogen peroxide to remove the lignin from hemp. Still not ideal, but significantly better. 

• Hemp can also be recycled up to seven or eight times, whereas wood can only be recycled three times. 

In other words, there are many good reasons to return to hemp. However, it will require the so-called “Big Five” publishers to make the switch to provide enough demand to reduce the cost of hemp paper to the point where smaller publishers, which includes Alberta publishers, can afford to start using it. 

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