environment

How are we eco-friendly?

Here at Gumboot Books, we believe that it is extremely important to be responsible and ethical in our business decisions.  A core value in all the people we work with is a respect for our environment – both social and geographical.

Our social environment is one of respect for each other’s skills, priorities and goals, and a willingness to be flexible with our project scheduling so that ALL areas of our lives flow as smoothly as possible.

To protect our geographical environment, we try to operate as GREENLY as possible, and minimize our ecological footprint as we go about our daily business.  This is an ongoing evolution as new products and options become available constantly, so please let us know if you have come across a product you think would work well for us and be an improvement on what we currently have.

Below are a list of things we are currently doing to try to minimize our eco-impact.

Paper Free Office (soooo close!)

We do almost everything in the “virtual” office realm. Some things like contracts still have to be printed off, but when we do we do print pages we use 100% postconsumer recycled papers and print on both sides (duplex printers are a great investment)! Everything gets recycled when we’re done with it!

Digital Catalogue & Newsletters

We have a digital catalogue and newsletters, and only print copies on request (as they are needed) to reduce paper use and waste. We try to use our website as much as possible to bring you information, and email as often as possible, to keep our printed material to a minimum.

We NEVER overprint our books.

One of the really bad habits of the book industry is to overprint books to get the per unit cost down far enough.  Then, when they don’t sell, usually the store returns the books to the distributor, and in turn to the publisher.  This is super expensive, and by this point many of the books are damaged anyways, so what often happens is the covers get ripped off and returned and the books themselves recycled.We firmly believe this is not efficient in any way (financially, transportation wise or in terms of chemical footprint to recycle them).  Plus, we love books, and the thought of all that hard work and love and care and attention getting shredded makes us feel a little sick inside.

We use all the latest technologies, combined with classic print methods when larger volumes are called for, to bring your books as directly from the printer to your door as we can, in the most energy and resource efficient way possible. If we do end up with damaged books, they are ALWAYS donated to a school, a shelter, or a literacy charity of some kind.

Recycled Papers

All of our promotional materials are printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper, and most are also printed with vegetable based inks. We do a lot of the printing ourselves so that we only need to create exactly what we need for each event.We also use recycled paper to print our books, cards, invitations, and use recycled paper envelopes and stationary for what little printing we do in our office.

Green Transportation

We don’t have a company vehicle.  We choose whichever method of transportation is most efficient for getting to and from meetings, delivering books or travelling to conferences/workshops. We belong to a car co-op so that if we do need a vehicle, we can book one.  Otherwise, we walk, take buses, carpool…whatever works best!  We try to do most of our business locally, to keep travel costs to a minimum.

Minimal Packaging

We do everything we can to minimize our packaging.  When we can’t get rid of it entirely, we try to use packaging made from recycled materials, products that are biodegradable and also we try to reuse our packing materials as much as possible.

We also tend not to use dust covers on our books.  We just make books with tough covers in the first place, and covered in great art, and then skip the extra printing of the ink and the extra paper usage.

BYOB – Bring Your Own Bag!

We have created a line of re-usable cloth bags that are durable, unique and will help make the process of bringing your own bag a little more fun!  They feature characters from our books, and we bring them with us to sales events when we’re out and about in the community.

For the odd occasion when we do need to use plastic bags (like when you buy a book at an outdoor festival in the pouring rain), we have some great bio-degradable bags that we use.