Episode Notes Stories of Sustainability Episode 2: Hannah Clevett, Impact Manager at World of Books, certified B Corp. World of Books Group is a leading global seller of used books online. Leading the way to a circular economy, the brand is a for profit business that supports charities and protects the planet by enabling more goods to be reused. Printed books are still popular as ever. In 2020, the UK printed book market was worth £2.6 bn (387m books), of which 32% of sales were for preloved books. The WOB Foundation launched in 2022, and donates books to charities that work with disadvantaged groups who find it hard to access books such as schools, prisons and women’s refuges. Q1Hi Hannah, thanks for joining me today. Please tell us about yourself and WOB. · Impact Manager at World of Books, been with the company for over 6 years, within Impact for 18 months. · My role is the full ESG – everything from carbon reporting, B Corp certification, and various social initiatives that allow Wob have an even greater impact. · Always been passionate about Impact and sustainability, never dreamt it could be a career choice until I started with Wob. A company that is ahead of the game when it comes to sustainability strategy. · Wob is circular economy by nature, purchases unwanted used books and media from charity shops and selling on at affordable prices. · We are a circular economy, for profit company, that protects the planet and supports charities by helping people to reuse and recycle for less. · We have 3 main strands: o Through Wob we sell o Through Ziffit we buy – customers can sell back their books to Wob via the Ziffit app. Keeping books in circulation for longer. o Through Shopiago we support others – Charities are able to trade their stock to Wob through Shopiago. It is also a software service that enable charities to sell their own items online to increase sales. A great example is The British Heart Foundation sold a vintage Cartier watch for £10,000 through their use of Shopiago! o In total, we have helped charities raise over £55 million through their use of Shopiago! · In 2019 we became a B Corp, recently recertified, which really cements our values and helps to guide our sustainability strategy. Q2 Please can explain to our listeners the connection between the circular economy and publishing? · We are purchasing unwanted books from charity shops. So these are books that have potentially been read only once, maybe 10 times, or in cases such as within our Rare Book department, hundreds of times! They would be pulped by charities if we didn’t buy them for our stock, and open up the possibility to rehome to customers around the world. We feel it is important to keep literature alive and keep books in circulation. · We also always refer to sales as rehoming our books, because we don’t want it to be the end of the journey for our books. · Some of our customers have told us how they buy used books as an affordable option, which helps encourage them to read more and then opens up a whole new world for them. They then begin buy a mix of new and used. · It’s a tricky relationship for sure – we find that some customers want to buy new books because they feel they are supporting the industry and authors, yet other want to purchase used to save money, and also to feel more eco-conscious. · Wob helped found the AuthorShare initiative alongside Society of Authors and various publishers in order to allow royalties to be given to authors from used books sales. This is the first of its kind, and a way to show our support for the author’s whilst encouraging people to buy preloved. Q3: Almost 16 million preloved books rehomed via Wob in 2021/22, What are the environmental benefits of buying and selling preloved books, compared to purchasing new ones? · By buying preloved items, we are keeping them in circulation and reducing waste. · One of our main KPIs that we have always measured against is what the tonnage of books equates to in saving trees. So for our last FY, we saved the equivalent of 516,000 trees through the resale of books! That is a lot more tangible for our customers to understand their impact, rather than quoting carbon numbers. · We do measure our carbon impact of course, and we have always reported on our ‘existence’ – this is something that is now being termed ‘Avoided Emissions’ so we are slightly ahead of the game with that which puts us in a great position to help educate on the impact of buying preloved books. · Something we are looking at over the next year, which is really exciting and unique, is to conduct a LCA on used books. This will allow us to put an accurate, science ...
