Making Pain-Free Books

Lonely Planet works hard to reduce waste in the production and distribution of our books. This means more than just sourcing environmentally friendly paper.

Many of the steps we take may be invisible to the untrained eye but, as travel publishers, we realise the world is a fragile place and that environmentally responsible production is the only real option.

We've already put some really great initiatives in place, and we'll be continually looking for ways to improve, but so far, here's what we're doing:

  Reducing Excess Stock

• We have gotten smart with our forecasting, to ensure fewer copies are left over at the end of an edition's life. Some of those left-overs are donated to charities, although the time-sensitive nature of the information in our books means they are not that useful to schools and libraries.
• Our detailed forecasting system and flexible printing schedule means Lonely Planet has a returns rate which is well below the industry average.
• We have designed our global distribution system to minimise the number of times a book is moved. This has lowered the amount of carbon emissions involved in distributing Lonely Planet titles.

« Responsible Travel Home | back to top

  Using Smart Design

• Lonely Planet guidebooks use a standard series design (template) which minimises waste in book production.
• Paper is sourced in a format to meet this design, so waste associated with trimming standard stock sizes is reduced.
• In order to reduce the weight of our titles and thus distribute them with less environmental impact, we use the thinnest paper possible. We rigorously edit and format our content to get the maximum amount of information on every page.

« Responsible Travel Home | back to top

  Sourcing Kind Paper

• Lonely Planet is committed to using Ancient Forest Friendly Paper (AFF) that is 100% Forest Stewardship Council plantation timber approved. This means we use paper products that aren't produced from ancient forests. Overall approximately 80% of the paper we use is AFF paper.
• We work with suppliers to further improve the environmental credentials of our paper. We work with Greenpeace's Markets Initiative group to ensure:
  • The virgin fibre is produced from plantation forests which have Forest Stewardship Council accreditation.
  • The paper process is a closed loop so that the environment around the mill is protected.
  • The paper is whitened using chlorine-free bleaching techniques.

« Responsible Travel Home | back to top

  Keeping up labour standards with our suppliers

• Lonely Planet believes the people involved in producing our books should be well treated. We have signed documentation from all our major suppliers confirming their compliance with local, national and (where relevant) international laws relating to:
  • Minimum age requirements for full and part-time staff
  • Working hours, leave and redundancy entitlements
  • Health and safety requirements
  • Environmental protection and minimum wage and salary requirements (where relevant).
• All our suppliers abide by the relevant laws of the land as a minimum, with most exceeding these requirements. We constantly manage these relationships and regularly visit our suppliers to ensure these agreements are being honoured.

We'll be regularly updating this page with new information on what we're doing, so don't forget to come back and visit.

« Responsible Travel Home | back to top