Carbon neutral, and proud of it: Mark Robertson

Global journal publisher Blackwell Publishing last month announced it was going carbon neutral. Richard Collins talked to the president of its Asian business, Mark Robertson, about the idea and its implementation.

Blackwell Publishing has decided to go carbon neutral. Where did the idea come from?
Prior to our announcement to become carbon neutral we had quite a number of employee initiatives in place across the company to address the issue of the environment. As a result of input from both staff and clients, the management committee decided to take a radical and proactive step by implementing this change initiative and adopting a corporate social responsibility stance.

So did you see this as simply being a good corporate citizen or is there a strategic imperative as well? For example, most of your titles are journals for learned societies, who may be more attracted to the concept.
While the move may well be welcomed by many of our clients, the primary motivation was driven by the mission of our company.

Can you outline how it will work? For example, how much CO2 you expect to offset? At what cost?
To become carbon neutral, we had to first figure out our “carbon footprint”, which involved finding out all sorts of facts, such as our rate of energy usage, gas, travel and water consumption. We also decided to go one step further than others by incorporating the carbon emissions from all our global product shipments dispatched from the UK, US or Asia.
To this end, we worked with the Edinburgh Centre of Carbon Management to turn this data into something quantifiable. Together with the Carbon Neutral Company we worked to identify projects that would offset our emissions (see fact file).
We are, and will continue to be, on the constant lookout to improve our carbon footprint, such as currently exploring carbon-neutral energy suppliers or switching to green power. We also worked with our partners Singapore Post and Spring Asia Pacific to get their input as some 87 per cent of our emissions are product-shipment related. All this will be a significant investment that we think is well worthwhile.

There is some skepticism about companies announcing grand green plans, particularly if there’s no internal driver to change personal performance and company culture. How has it been sold – and enforced – internally?
The internal response has been very positive. We had our official launch on March 13, which coincided with an internal Environment Week in the UK office driven by our staff consultative committee. The week focused on issues such as alternative energy usage, waste, water and transport. It was aimed at educating and encouraging the staff to adopt a more environmentally responsible approach to their lives. This initiative will be rolled out to all Blackwell Publishing offices globally through our corporate newsletter, staff brief-ings etc.
There has been an overwhelming response from staff globally since the staff memo first went prior to our launch. Most of them were proud and eager to pass on the news to our external stakeholders, which shows us this CarbonNeutral initiative has been well received and achieved much ground support.

Who has ultimate responsibility for implementing and managing the scheme?
Blackwell’s operations director, Mike Fenton, who sits on the management committee, has the nominated responsibility, but the implementation is being carried out by many staff and managers.

You also plan to work with suppliers to improve their carbon profile. How?
There are many ways. For instance, we are changing our supplier selection criteria to include a commitment to carbon neutrality. In the UK, there are suppliers of courier services or taxi services who have become carbon neutral. By electing to use one of these instead of our existing suppliers we ensure a little more carbon is removed from the environment. The same goes for power supply companies.

Lastly, what will Blackwell Publishing look like in 10 or 15 years as a result of going carbon neutral?
Who knows what the future holds! I suspect we will have far less paper products being shipped around the world, with more being delivered on-line.
I think we will have a more environmentally aware product movement and supply chain. I hope that Blackwell Publishing will continue to reduce our carbon emissions and will eventually be in a position of actually taking carbon out of the environment in a net position.