Earth Day 2025: Arachne Press

To celebrate Earth Day earlier this week, we asked Arachne Press to share a bit about what they currently do to be environmentally friendly, what their future plans are, and what they'd like to do if money were no object.

We know that books aren’t the most ecologically sound items on earth, production of paper uses a lot of water, wood* and power. Deliveries use petrol or diesel although some delivery companies are moving to electric vehicles. And so it goes. But once produced, a book lasts a good while, potentially centuries if cared for. It can be read over and over, without the use of any power whatsoever (unless you insist on reading in bed with a head lamp or whatever). Some of our books even campaign for the environment. (Words from the Brink, Naming the Trees, Byways, Afonydd)

What we do now

• In the UK we print our books on woodfree* paper. (Incidentally, ‘woodfree’ paper isn’t woodfree, but it is very slow to age, so our stock remains saleable.)
• We supply trade orders overseas by printing as close to the end point of delivery as possible.
• Our electricity is 100% from renewables, and we have solar panels on the roof, which in summer cover 100% of our office needs. We have batteries installed which helps cover the winter office needs too.
• We order our office stationery (and catering equipment for events) from suppliers who only use recycled/ biodegradable materials. and we reuse ‘single use’ where it is hygienic to do so, until they fall apart – roughly 6 usages.
• We use recycled/biodegradable packaging for orders from our website and recycle packaging that comes in to us (we’ve never yet bought any bubble wrap – it comes from elsewhere), so you might find your delivery wrapped in something eccentric like used present wrappings, or off-cuts of cloth.
• We offset carbon on our deliveries from suppliers.
• For events, where practicable (sometimes it really isn’t), we travel with all our gear by public transport. We encourage our writers to do likewise. Amazing what a wheelie suitcase can carry!
• We use a web browser & search engine that plants trees, and runs on solar power (Ecosia, if you are interested!)

What we are doing next

• In 2025 we are revamping our (very ungreen) website to improve its load time and reduce our audio-visual assets.  We’ve already started, and have reduced our storage by 20% so far, but obviously not everything is going – we’ll keep the BSL videos, but we don’t really need every video of every performance of every poem… When we have it as slim and clean as we can get it, we will move to a new hosting platform, which is run on 100% green energy. We have a shortlist of companies to quiz… and then we will change our eCommerce provider, so that we lose all the duplication of information on the site, further lessening our burden on resources.

If money were no object:

• we would put another array of solar panels on the other side of the building, which would mean we could heat all our water electrically and possibly pay back enough into the grid that our heating would be free too. Or if really really no object, change to electric space heating. Unfortunately, the building isn’t suitable for a air source heat pump.
• We would stop doing our amateur grey water recycling and get a plumber in to fix it to happen automatically.
• On the production side, we would print on paper that is really woodfree – there are some hemp papers that might be worth exploring. We would use non-plastic laminate on our book covers, and we would use vegetable inks. That would double the cost of every book easily, at the same time as possibly making them less pleasant to handle and read, so it would have to be the absolute best quality. 

Hands up if you would be willing to pay £25+ for a slim volume of poetry?