While the use of paper and paper products has not declined significantly—despite much talk in the 1990s of a coming paperless society—the publishing industry is using less paper. According to a new industry report, paper consumption by the book industry declined by 34% from 2006 to 2010, due in part to the great recession and in part to increasing sales of e-books. This information comes from a report whose primary purpose was to track the book publishing industry’s overall environmental impact on the world. Another item highlighted in the report is the increasing quantity of recycled material in the paper that is used by the industry. According to the report, the use of recycled fiber by the book publishing industry rose from 5% of all fiber in 2004 to 24% in 2010.
By way of placing this information in the context of the larger paper industry, it is worth noting that during the period covered in the Book Industry Environmental Trends report, the total value of product shipments made by U.S. Paper and Newsprint Mills dropped by 6.2%, from $45.5 billion in 2006 to $42.7 billion in 2010. In 2006, newsprint represented 7% of the value of all paper mill product shipments and by 2010 that percentage had fallen to 3.6%. But, a discussion of newsprint takes us into a complex niche within the paper market, one we will cover in another post one day soon.
Today’s market size is the volume of paper consumed by the U.S. book industry in 2006 and 2010.
Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2006 and 2010
Market size: 1.76 million tons and 1.16 million tons respectively
Source: Jim Milliot, “Keeping the Green in Publishing,” Publishers Weekly, July 22, 2013, pages 5-6, available online here. The rate of decline in value of output by U.S. Paper and Newsprint Mills was calculated from figures published by the U.S. Census Bureau in its Annual Survey of Manufacturers, (ASM) series of reports, “Value of Product Shipments,” and specifically, data reported under NAICS codes 322121 and 322122. The ASM data are available online here.
Original source: Book Industry Environmental Trends and U.S. Census Bureau
Posted on September 10, 2013