Environment
Our commitmentÂ
Cambridge University Press & Assessment recognises the climate emergency and our responsibility to act.Â
Our role as a leader in global education and research is to inform and progress action and debate around the world’s most pressing challenges, including the environment and climate change.Â
We are also committed to reducing our environmental impact across all areas of our operations.Â
We work to support our suppliers to share our ambitions for a carbon zero supply chain, while promoting our environmental ambitions to our people, customers and partners around the world.
Contributing to global goals
We are a signatory to the United Nations (UN) Global Compact, and we commit to upholding the principles of environmental responsibility and innovation across all our operations. Our actions for sustainability are aligned to support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We consider our impact across a range of issues including biodiversity, water use and the consumption of resources as well as gender equality and quality eduction.
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Sustainable & ethical procurement
All our suppliers must comply with our code of conduct, which reflects our business ethics. We aim to use only use legal and sustainable sources, regardless of the complexity of the production process. We use our international buying power to encourage suppliers to review their own practices, working with them to solve mutual problems and to evaluate the environmental credentials of our supply chain as part of our tendering process.
Find out moreReducing emissions
We are committed to being carbon zero on all energy-related emissions by 2048, with a 72 per cent reduction by 2030. We've set science-based targets for our UK electricity, gas and fleet emissions (scopes 1 & 2) and are working on science-based targets for other indirect emissions across the entire value chain such as purchased products, travel, transport and waste (scope 3). Our strategic approach to reducing our energy use and carbon emissions involves switching to greener heating and cooling systems, using more renewable energy sources, using our sites efficiently as well as actively encouraging our team to adopt energy-efficient practices.
Find out more in our annual report Our carbon report 2022-23Responsible use of resources
Alongside reducing our carbon, we have identified the need to reduce our use of paper and plastic as well as water use and potential contamination. We've already switched some of our packaging to paper and reduced the amount of plastic used in our secure packaging while we seek alternatives. We are also actively reducing our waste. Our main waste contractor for our Cambridge sites sends nothing to landfill, processing recycling and food waste sustainably and using any other waste to generate greener energy.
Climate education
We believe education plays a vital role in tackling the  climate crisis. High quality education, that includes climate-related knowledge and skills, will enable students and communities to develop, transition and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
At Cambridge University Press & Assessment we have the responsibility and capability to prepare students for the future. And we need to act at unprecedented speed and scale.
Through our education programmes, publishing, assessment and research, we can create the knowledge, skills and understanding required for adapting to climate change and enabling agency. Through engaging with students and teachers in classrooms around the world, and with the ministries of education, we want to work together and be part of finding solutions for the future .
Our qualifications and assessments
Our curricula, qualification specifications and syllabuses, and teaching and learning materials, are being systematically reviewed to enhance opportunities to include high quality climate-related content across a range of subjects. Young people also need opportunities to develop skills of critical evaluation and creative problem-solving for current climate issues and those that will arise in the future.Â
Across our International Education programmes, the Cambridge Learner Attributes feature very clearly in a holistic approach to climate education. They are our way of recognising that students need to develop attitudes and life skills throughout their education, as well as academic skills, in order to thrive and have a positive impact in our changing world.
The Global Perspectives series across primary, lower secondary, IGCSE and AS and A Level also helps students learn core, transferrable skills by asking them to think critically about a range of global issues including climate change, energy and resources; water, food and agriculture, poverty and inequality.
CELTA and DELTA, benchmark qualifications for teaching English overseas, help more people access the language of climate change and sustainability. The Cambridge sustainability toolkit for English language teaching is designed to help teachers integrate sustainability education into their lessons.
Our UK exam board OCR are committed to supporting a curriculum that helps young people develop an ethical view of the world. This enables them to take social responsibility, understand environmental issues and prepare them for the green jobs of the future. They are working on a new GCSE in Natural History and developing a new KS4 Cambridge National vocational qualification in Sustainability: Business and Communities, helping to transform options for all students.
Our publishing
The books and research we publish as Cambridge University Press aim to improve understanding of big, global challenges – from climate change to pandemics – and to find solutions. Many of these titles have won a range of prestigious awards, with the most recent ones listed in our latest annual report.Â
Many of our authors are at the forefront of climate science, and our publishing ranges from scientific research, textbooks to general books from some of the world’s highest-profile climate activists. Some of our key climate and sustainability titles include:
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No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air by Mark JacobsonÂ
The world needs to turn away from fossil fuels and use clean, renewable sources of energy as soon as we can. We still have time to save the planet without resorting to 'miracle' technologies.
Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change by Simon SharpeÂ
We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. This book sets out how we should rethink our strategies and reorganise our efforts in the fields of science, economics, and diplomacy, so that we can act fast enough to stay safe.
The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success: Overcoming Myths that Hinder Progress by Mark Jaccard
Named one of the best books of 2020 for environment in the Financial Times.
There is No Planet B by Mike Berners-Lee
‘Mike doesn’t preach, instead he shares his insights with warmth and wit, and his book could not be more timely.’ David Shukman, BBC Science Editor.
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Global Sustainability
An open access journal dedicated to supporting the rapidly expanding area of global sustainability research. It publishes interdisciplinary research, reviews and commentaries that explore human social and economic pressures and sustainable solutions.
Sourcing sustainable paper
As a publisher and examination group, we are reliant on sourcing paper and board and recognise the impact that this has on the environment. It is essential we set serious targets to reduce the impact on the natural world of everything we procure.
We only use legal and sustainable sources, regardless of the complexity of the production process. To help us, we work with recognised standard setters.
Overall, 60 percent of all our paper use across our publishing, assessments and our office use is now from certified sustainable sources. In our Cambridge University Press books and journals, 75 percent now contain only paper and board that is certified, and the remaining 25 percent are being updated to include paper and board from sources rated by the Publishers Database for Responsible Environmental Paper Sourcing (PREPS).
As part of our commitment to championing sustainability with our supply chain, we are working with the Book Chain Project to capture detailed information about the environmental impact of our supply chain and identify areas for collective improvement. We have also completed systematic supply audits with the top 25 percent of our suppliers using Sedex Members Ethical Trace Audit (SMETA), helping us to understand working conditions in our supply chain.
Accreditation and awards
The passion, energy and commitment of our colleagues has resulted in external recognition from accreditation to international standards to an array of sustainability awards for Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
ISO14001 environmental management
We achieved ISO14001 certification again after an independent external audit in May 2022, having first achieved the international standard in 2007. To be certified to ISO14001 standard – which meets international best practice – we have to prove we have considered our impact on the environment, have plans, leadership and sufficient resources in place to improve our environmental performance, and we monitor and document our performance to ensure we can continually improve.
IPG Sustainability Award winners
Cambridge University Press won the Independent Publishers Guild Sustainability Award two years in a row, which recognised the concrete actions we have taken to make our operations more sustainable, as well as the powerful combination of our climate change and sustainability publishing, and the energy and enthusiasm of our colleagues. We were proud to be a finalist again in 2022.Â
Green Impact AwardsÂ
In 2022, we achieved a Platinum Green Impact award for our UK operations in recognition of extensive efforts to promote sustainability practises at work, Silver for our Cape Town team and bronze for Madrid. Two colleagues achieved special awards, one for environment improvement for bringing our on-site allotment back in to use; and for colleagues who organise monthly climate cafes. Cambridge Assessment has previously won the Platinum Award and Cambridge University Press's environment action group gained a Bronze Award for their work to reduce the environmental footprint of University Printing House.Â
Timber Scorecard
In 2019 the Press gained the top Timber Scorecard rating from World Wildlife Fund – a prestigious 3 Trees score recognising our work to make sure we source sustainable timber. We went from a 0 Tree score in 2015 to 3 Trees in 2019. The scheme has been discontinued.
