Issuu

By Joe Hyrkin, CEO, Issuu

The effects of climate change are hard to ignore. From wildfires, droughts, and flooding in the West to rising sea levels and typhoons in the East, companies must realize that finding solutions is not only a governmental and societal problem, but a business imperative.

It’s not only about making your office green or employee policies more environmentally friendly, it’s actively seeking ways that your business or government agency can make thoughtful business decisions with sustainability in mind.

As a digital publishing company, the nature of Issuu’s business helps improve the environment. Digital publishing saves an immense amount of paper each year, and every piece of paper saved helps repair our planet. As you know, trees serve a vital role in not only converting CO2 to oxygen, but storing much of the world’s carbon.

Sustainability matters to us all, and at Issuu, we’ve prioritized it as an important core business value. So we watch our metrics closely, tying them to both revenue and environmental impact.

A few months ago we conducted an internal analysis of the aggregate publishing activity happening on Issuu, and the data was inspiring.

More than 20,000 new documents and publications are uploaded to Issuu every day. These range in size from two-page sales spec sheets and 10-page real estate brochures to 48-page travel magazines, 300page retail catalogs and 500+ page textbooks and beyond.

In addition to the number of pages, we also take into consideration the number of times a piece of content is read when measuring impact. This is because while someone only needs to upload a publication once to Issuu, in the physical world they would need to print a new copy for almost every reader. Often, people don’t even read every page that is printed in a magazine or book. Yet it still consumes a sheet of paper.

Between March 2020 and March 2021, digital documents and publications were read over 1.5 billion times on Issuu. 1,588,139,035, to be precise. However in the digital world, a page not-read has zero environmental impact.

So we dug deeper. Using the same subset of data, we tracked over 32 billion pages read. Instead of calculating our impact based on the number of pages published, we used the number of pages read.

Next, we considered how many sheets of paper an average tree produces. The industry consensus is 8,333. Of course different tree types and sizes produce differing results, but for our purposes, we took the average.

Based on these numbers, we estimate that our Issuu publishing community has saved 3,811,686 trees in the past year alone. This kind of impact from our customers is what makes our everyday efforts worth it.

What can your company do to improve your environmental impact? Here are six tips.

Reduce business travel, and make necessary trips count Issuu has offices in Copenhagen, Berlin, Braga (Portugal), and Palo Alto (California), plus many of our U.S. employees work in cities and towns across the country. We work across continents and time zones, nd while nothing replaces in-person relationships, we rely heavily on tools like Slack, Zoom, Loom, and Jira to foster collaboration. When we do have to travel, we condense trips and combine meetings to get the most out of every mile.

Encourage the use of public transportation for commuting. During the pandemic, our employees worked mostly from home, which saved countless emissions. But as we reopen our offices, as safety allows, we’re hopeful that public transportation will once again be a popular way to commute to work.

Donate extra office furniture and computers to nonprofits and local governments With many companies going remote, you may have extra office furniture and computer equipment on hand. Instead of offloading it to liquidators for pennies on the dollar, research local nonprofits and essential businesses such as hospitals, NGOs, and local governments and donate it. In many cases you may receive a write-off, but more importantly recycling furniture can help both the environment and organizations dedicated to social good.

If you make physical goods, reconsider your packaging and shipping Reducing plastic is critical to the preservation of our oceans, and helps landfills. There are many green alternatives available today, and the costs are often comparable or only

slightly more expensive than plastic. As for shipping? Try to disperse manufacturing to more plants closer to customers, and avoid quick-ship options. If your customers value your product, they’ll wait a few extra days to receive it and you’ll help reduce shipping-based environmental costs. Reduce paper usage Whether for internal or external use, businesses often use a lot of paper. Try turning off your office printer for a week to easily identify areas of over-printing. If you notice specific employees often printing large files, learn more and see if training in digital

solutions may help. And if no one notices, turn off the printer. You’ll save energy with little cost. For larger printing jobs such as trade show collateral, brochures etc., try using digital tools to host your content online, and experiment with QR codes to bridge the gap between in-person interactions and your digital content.

Use Issuu Issuu provides the tools to transform content you might normally print into elegant looking digital formats that can be shared digitally across any channel. Millions of businesses and organizations have jettisoned printing altogether and rely on Issuu’s tools to present their materials and information to their audiences on their device of choice. Issuu provides an alternative that is more convenient, less costly and of course more environmentally beneficial than print.

Here at Issuu, we understand just how important it is for larger companies and organizations to make steps towards a more sustainable future. We’re committed to doing our part, and hope you will join us. ◆