Our Commitment to Forest Conservation

Indigo Books & Music Inc. is committed to forest conservation. In fact it's an underlying focus of our company's sustainability strategy. As the leading Canadian retailer of books, the paper in the books we sell and the paper we use internally represent a major part of our environmental footprint. Our goal is to significantly reduce the use of papers containing fibre from endangered and high conservation value forests and to shift the entire Canadian book publishing industry to more sustainable paper practices. This is essential when you consider that 71% of the world's paper supply comes from ecologically diverse forests. That is why Indigo has developed a pioneering paper purchasing policy in conjunction with environmental non-profit, Canopy (best known as the organization behind the greening of Harry Potter). canopyplanet.org

Many of us know that our forests act as the lungs of the Earth but lesser known is the fact that our boreal forests provide many other ecosystem services, such as cleaning our air, purifying our water and preventing floods. Of course forests are also critical as species habitat to a number of species including endangered and threatened populations of woodland caribou. They are also important sources of recreation and inspiration. However, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, "poor logging practices and planning threaten the future of our forests."

Forests also play an active role in regulating Earth's climate. Often called carbon sinks, forests help both remove and store carbon from the atmosphere. According to the US Book Industry Study, paper product consumes about 70% of the carbon utilized in the book industry. Indigo is working to promote more environmental papers in the book industry with the development of its paper policy and has already launched plans to reduce its own paper consumption by 25% by 2012.