Hachette Announces New Carbon Emissions Reduction Strategy (publishersweekly.com)

R.C. Brayshaw & Company has joined Two Sides North America, the non-profit organization that promotes and encourages the responsible production, use, and sustainability of print and paper. “We are very pleased to be a new member company of Two Sides North America. When my father, Richard C. Brayshaw started the company in 1979, he made a commitment to do whatever was necessary to protect the environment,” stated Tom Brayshaw, President and CEO. “Our commitment to environmental awareness is ongoing and means taking a responsible approach at all our facilities and operations. At R.C. Brayshaw & Company we always look for ways to help make our communities better places to live and raise our families.”

Leading retailers H&M Group, Ingka Group (IKEA), Kingfisher plc and Walmart today launched a new climate change initiative – the Race to Zero Breakthroughs: Retail Campaign – in partnership with the COP26 High Level Climate Action Champions and supported by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Retailers have pledged their support to accelerate a movement in the retail industry to drive climate action and encourage other retailers to set out their plans to achieve 1.5 degree aligned carbon reduction targets. The retail sector faces unprecedented challenges due to climate change, which have only been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The imperative to take action to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius has never been higher. Despite bold actions from some leading retail brands, a decarbonization pathway for the sector is notably absent, with only 5% of retail businesses – by total global industry revenues – having committed to taking action to limit global warming in accordance with the Paris Agreement goals.

Worker safety continues to be a top priority for AF&PA members. Their commitment to safety is demonstrated in a variety of ways: through worker training programs, increased automation, adopting a host of injury-preventive measures and safeguards, and developing new equipment to keep workers safe. Because any injuries to our industry’s employees are not acceptable, AF&PA members adopted a visionary Better Practices, Better Planet 2020 goal of working towards zero injuries and measuring progress toward that vision by further improving our incidence rate by 25 percent from 2006 to 2020. Between 2006 and 2014, the incidence rate for member companies declined by 40.8 percent to 1.56. The 2014 incidence rate for manufacturing at large was 4.0 in 2014, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, more than double the rate of AF&PA members. (The incident rate measures the number of recordable cases for 100 people working 40 hours a week for 50 weeks.)