Environmental approach

Like most organisations, we are a long way from being able to claim that we are carbon neutral. However, we take our responsibility seriously for the part we must play in our stewardship of the planet.

Over the past few years we have made changes in several areas of business to improve our environmental sustainability.

We see this as a beginning, not a completed job, and we hope in the future to be able to measure our impact on the planet as we work to minimise it over time.

Office

In Q1 2020 we changed our power supply to a 100% renewable energy provider, while continuing to investigate ways to reduce the amount of electricity we use day to day.

SoA staff use laptops instead of more power-hungry desktop computers, and all our computer services (file storage, email, database, etc) are hosted in distributed cloud services instead of powerful local servers.

We use environmentally friendly consumables – from recycled toilet paper to eco-conscious cleaning products – and we reuse packaging materials, particularly for distributing books and other materials in our awards judging processes.

We run a staff-led Green Team which aims to identify new ways to reduce our environmental impact of our office activities.

Membership

We have drastically reduced our levels of print and paper communications over the past few years, in favour of email renewal reminders and other digital communications, and plastic cards designed to be replaced only when they are damaged instead of every year.

As we have moved to storing digital member records and communications with the office, we have cut out unnecessary printing when we respond to your queries.

The Author

The Spring 2020 edition of our quarterly journal (volume 131.1) had an environmental theme, with articles raising awareness of environmental author activists, as well as what the publishing industry is doing to green itself. It was the first edition to be printed entirely on recycled paper stock by a printer run on renewable energy, and distributed in a compostable polywrap.