Scout Books is committed not only to making great little books, but also to creating a great workplace, ensuring that we are making our products in the most sustainable way possible, and making the world just a little bit better. We thought, what better time to share some information regarding our efforts in sustainability than on Earth Day? Here are some of the achievements we’re particularly proud of:
• Our books are entirely Made in the USA, and produced using materials sourced as locally as possible, sometimes as local as down the street from us! Aside from our staple material, all the materials used to produce Scout Books are also Made in the USA, most of it right here in in the Pacific Northwest.
• Our paper is made from 100% recycled materials, both the covers and interior pages. By using 100% recycled paper, we saved over 2500 trees from being cut down!* There are a host of other benefits to using recycled paper vs non-recycled, like saving the equivalent of 25 homes electricity for an entire year, and saving over 690,000 gallons of water.
• Our ink is made by Great Western Ink made just across the river from us in Portland, and is vegetable-based rather than petroleum-based.
• We designed the layout of Scout Books to be as low-impact as possible. Both our Pocket and Mega formats are designed specifically to produce the least amount of waste. One sheet of paper makes every page of a Pocket Scout Book!
• In 2016 we recycled over 46 tons of paper! 96,692 pounds of it, to be precise. That saves 246 trees, 2,345 gallons of oil, 74,212 gallons of water, and 24,768 hours of electricity from being needed! We try to produce as little waste as possible, but when we can recycle, we do! (cite)
• Our shop runs on 100% renewable energy through Portland GE, and we ship with the UPS carbon neutral program.
• As part of becoming a B Corp (we’re almost there!) we survey each of our suppliers about their practices and the way they make their products, from the paper we use in our books, right down to the cleaning supplies we use around the office.
• In 2016 we planted 500 trees with our More Trees Please! and Draw More, Plant More! notebooks, where we planted a tree for each book made via donations to the National Forest Foundation.
• We believe that social justice goes hand in hand with environmental sustainability. Through our Choose Hope notebook and Pocket Edition of the United States Constitution, we’ve donated over $1,650 to the American Civil Liberties Union to date.
We also encourage our employees to give back to the community by offering paid volunteer time, and this year, we created the Equity Alliance, which we talked about in a full post. We’re thrilled with the progress we’ve made in making our business sustainable, and we can’t wait to contribute to more excellent causes and take further steps towards incorporating sustainable business practices in the future.
*Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 3.2.1. For more information visit www.papercalculator.org.