Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Sam Thornton, Executive Project Manager, Mare Nostrum Group.

If you ever find yourself browsing the meat aisle in a supermarket, you’d be hard pressed to miss the lovely pictures of some chap dressed as a Barbour campaign, in front of a wooden fence penning in cattle in the field behind — and look! It’s even got his signature on the packet! — all to show (or at least imply) that the supermarket knows where its meat is from. Now, pop into your local Waterstones and repeat the exercise; trees have definitely been cut down to make that copy of Gravity’s Rainbow you hold in your hand (put it down, we both know you’re not going to finish it), but where did those trees fall? And where’s the lumberjack’s signature?

Enter EUDR, the EU Deforestation Regulation. The aims of the legislation are laudable: to stop products that could contribute to deforestation from being available on the European market. The execution, less so. EUDR covers rubber, palm oil, soy, beef, coffee, cacao, and wood, and, crucially for our publishing industry, anything derived from those commodities, obliging companies selling any affected products in the EU to have a significant amount of supply chain information to prove where these goods came from, and that any deforestation risks are mitigated against.

In principle, all well and good, but the legislation is so broad and the requirements so onerous that they are nearly impossible for many publishers to comply with. In fact, the legislation is so complicated that its implementation was delayed by a full year, and with less than four months to go for the delayed start, even the largest publishers, distributors, trade customers, and printers still don’t have a working picture of how to process an order for a European customer; a fact that probably contributed to the EU announcing they’re delaying implementation by another year.

With the industry struggling to make their titles compliant in time, the data requirements apply to books printed before most in the industry were even aware the legislation existed; try finding a single mention of EUDR on The Bookseller, Scholarly Kitchen, or Publishers Weekly before September 2024 (which roughly coincides with when Amazon started to make a noise about it), at which point EUDR had already been adopted for over two years. Outside of the publishing industry — and to be frank, even within it — Europeans will be completely unaware that by the first of January next year they will lose access to hundreds of thousands of books. The UK isn’t out of the woods either, with Northern Ireland currently in limbo as to whether it needs to comply, with significant retailers such as Amazon.co.uk announcing that it will not order non-compliant titles.

Europeans will be completely unaware that by the 1st of January next year they will lose access to hundreds of thousands of books

Challenge: tracing paper to its source

Skipping over the supply chain risk assessments (etc.) that the EU expects large companies to abide by (which in practice means ‘paying a third party to do it for them’ — adding costs that will inevitably be passed onto consumers), the area of most concern is the requirements for tracing the commodity back to its source. The most demanding requirements are being able to provide;

• Geocoordinates for all the forests that contributed to the creation of the book.
• The weight (the EU is concerned with the weight of the books/paper moving in and out, not the number of books)
• Scientific (Latin) names of the trees that were cut down
• The date (range) when the trees were cut down

We work with many US-based publishers who, unsurprisingly, use US printers who source their paper from US paper suppliers, using wood from US mills, which come from US forests. According to the American Forest & Paper Association, 90% of the wood that contributes to US paper comes from 10.6 million private forest owners, with 40% of that wood mass coming from leftover materials. Using leftover materials (offcuts) is a good thing; waste not, want not. The problem with using offcuts is that it can become practically impossible to know which bits of wood came from where, which means that the offcut wood isn’t compliant and thus can’t be used. Not only does this discourage mills from using discarded wood (which is more wasteful and will increase the number of trees being cut down), it will also drive-up costs for consumers; paper mills will be forced to use more ‘virgin’ wood which can be traced, increasing costs which are passed onto printers buying the paper, who pass it onto publishers, who pass it on to European consumers. To quote one of my favorite films, “this, to me, might be considered kind of a step backwards, wouldn’t you say?”

Using offcuts is a good thing — but the new regulations discourage mills from using discarded wood because it is impossible to know which bits of wood came from where

The regulation is also blatantly protectionist. For example, whilst the EU will accept books printed in Europe during the phasing-in stage (between June 2023 and December 2025) because the printers will be complying with existing regulation (EUTR: EU Timber Regulation), the EU will not accept books printed in the UK, despite the fact that the printers will be complying with the UKTR (UK Timber Regulation), which is essentially a copy/paste version of the EUTR that the UK implemented after Brexit.

So what about books printed during the phasing-in stage that aren’t compliant (because we can’t get the historical location data)? Tough!, says the EU. Throw those books in the waste paper bin, they’re now illegal! My colleagues and I (at Mare Nostrum Group) have looked into this on behalf of over 130 academic, professional, and society publishers. For this group alone, we estimate there are over 100,000 units in stock in the UK that won’t be compliant because the information required by the EU doesn’t exist. That’s a lot of books to pulp (destroy). And those publishers are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only ones in this situation.

Over 100,000 units in stock in the UK will need to be pulped

What if there is stock of a book that isn’t compliant, but the publisher prints some compliant copies just for the EU? Firstly, there’s a cost involved for the publisher that they may not be able to afford, or it will involve increasing the RRP for the UK and EU market to offset the costs (which, understandably, we’re already encountering). Secondly, warehouses aren’t the TARDIS with infinite amounts of space and racking, and their systems are not suddenly able to track compliant and non-compliant stock against the same title (overhauling inventory tracking systems for large working warehouses is pure nightmare fuel for anyone who has worked in logistics). The only viable option is to get rid of the non-compliant stock.

To be clear, none of the books we hold will have contributed to unsustainable deforestation. We have spoken to publishers and distributors large and small, and they all face the same problem. We are in a farcical situation where a law intended to save the world’s forests could result in millions of printed books being destroyed simply because they haven’t filled out the right forms.

A law intended to save the world’s forests could result in millions of books being destroyed because they haven’t filled out the right forms.

Why EUDR discourages print-on-demand

It gets worse. The sheer volume of data transfer required for EUDR compliance threatens to seriously and permanently disrupt the trade of compliant titles and actively disadvantages more environmentally friendly options. Print-on-demand (POD) is a brilliant way of reducing the amount of stock a warehouse needs to hold, and reduces the amount of waste compared to printing to stock. Traditionally, publishers would guess (sorry, forecast) how many books they’ll sell, and print enough to tide them over for however long they need or can afford. The more they print, the cheaper it is, but it comes with the risk that unsold stock sits in the warehouse taking up valuable space, or, if their guess was way off and the title doesn’t sell as well as they’d hoped, it needs to be written off and pulped. It wastes money and trees. Print on demand is a newer technology, whereby the book is only printed when the customer places an order, so you’re only ever printing what you’re selling, massively reducing the number of units that might end up getting pulped. To see how EUDR punishes POD printing, let’s compare a typical order pre- and post-EUDR for POD.

Pre-EUDR, a retailer in Europe places an order with our distributor, who then sends the order to the printer (located in our distributor’s warehouse). Within 24 hours, the book has been printed, packed, and in the hands of a delivery company on its way to Europe.

Post-EUDR, a retailer in Europe places an order with our distributor. The distributor sends the order to the printer. The printer prints the book, and sends the EUDR compliance information for the paper used in the creation of the book to an EU database; the printer must have information (previously mentioned geolocation data, Latin tree species names, etc) for every card, paper, or board used in the book (for a typical hardback: information for the paper for the dust jacket, the paper for the cover, the board for the cover, and the paper for the pages). The EU database sends back two codes. The printer then needs to send those codes to the distributor’s system — and our system. We then need to send those codes to the publishing industry’s data aggregator, who will then send it on to the retailer, who will then (depending on how large the retailer is) need to create another entry in the EU database (so more information to the database, to receive back more codes), and they will then need to send those back to the distributor. The distributor will then need to provide those to the shipper for the customs declarations. Whereas pre-EUDR the turnaround time for the order is less than 24 hours, this post-EUDR order time frame could be close to 2 weeks just to get the book out the door. If all of the books we distribute were on POD and sold 1 copy a week, within a year, it would mean the generation of well over 10 million codes that require storage and management.

As print-to-stock will use the same batch of paper for one massive print run, that stock only requires one entry in the EU database, but POD could see a book printed multiple times a week, potentially using different batches of paper every time, each requiring compliance information and new database entries, and more codes.

The options are: significantly raise the prices for customers in Europe, or stop selling their books in those markets. Neither is a win for Europe.

Did I mention that only EU companies can upload information to the EU’s database (that pesky protectionism again)? ‘Ah!’ says the EU, ‘But it’s the responsibility of the company in the EU that is importing the book to upload the information to the EU database, so it’s not a problem!’. This is where theory clashes with reality. Geolocation data, dates of harvest, and so on, is a lot of information to store and manage, and, understandably, much of the industry has said they can’t or won’t work with that information. They are only willing to accept the codes the EU database provides after the geolocation data (etc) has been submitted. So, who is uploading the information to get those codes? Who indeed. It can’t be the non-EU paper mills, non-EU printers, non-EU publishers, or non-EU distributors because they’re not in the EU, so they can’t get access to the EU’s database. So a publisher will have to pay an EU third-party to do it for them. We work with a lot of small publishers, a number of whom aren’t even able to use the industry-standard data feeds and instead rely on spreadsheets to provide book data; the cost of using these third-party compliance companies will, for a number of these publishers, be greater than the profits they generate in the UK and Europe, and massively overwhelm these publishers’ technological capabilities. Which is to say, if they sold books in Europe, they would be doing it at a loss. So the options are: significantly raise the prices for customers in Europe, or stop selling their books in those markets. Neither is a win for Europe.

Much of what I’ve just suggested for the ordering process and workflow is still hypothetical, as the trade has still not worked out how this will function in practice, nor overcome the numerous massive logistical and technological issues that need to be overcome for this to work (e.g., ‘How will returns be managed?’), not to mention the number of major grey areas the EU has still not clarified (e.g., ‘Are direct B2C orders exempt? An ordinary consumer can’t be expected to upload information to an EU database just to order a book to their own home’).

Book bans and bare bookshelves

And finally, are Europeans aware of how many books won’t be compliant? And how many will never be compliant because of the costs involved? The effect of this is simple. Thousands, more likely millions, of titles will cease to be available in Europe overnight. Whilst “Florida book bans” get significant press coverage, there is a deafening silence on what the EU is putting into force, even though the EU is effectively banning a far broader range and number of books. When people hear ‘the EU is putting in laws to stop deforestation,’ they think ‘Oh good, maybe that will stop evil corporations from cutting down the rainforest to plant palm oil trees’ and not ‘The textbook that’s recommended for my university course is now illegal’.

The EU is effectively banning a far broader range and number of books than the Florida book bans

Suggested solutions

What are our options? Whilst a second year’s delay provides breathing room, it does not fundamentally alter the picture without serious reform to the requirements, and, thus far, the EU commission has shown very little appetite for softening the most egregious aspects of the legislation. Some welcome changes would be:

• A waiver for existing (non-EU) stock, especially for books printed in countries that don’t meaningfully contribute to deforestation (such as the US or UK). This alone could save hundreds of thousands (potentially millions) of books from being pulped.
• Non-EU companies should be allowed to upload information to the EU’s database. Whilst the excuse is that the EU has less jurisdiction over non-EU companies, this is more protectionist in practice than the tariffs raised by the US government, tariffs which the EU vocally opposes on similar grounds.
• Data requirements should stop at the point the paper is purchased. If the paper mills are fully compliant, what realistic benefit is gained from imposing costly bureaucratic requirements on anyone further down the supply chain? No further risk of deforestation is introduced further along the line. How this would work in practice would need some thought, but if the EU can suggest legislation with shockingly little idea as to how industries might comply, I don’t see why I can’t, too.

EUDR is a masterclass in regulatory burden.

At the start of the year, in an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde argued that they wanted to remove the ‘self-imposed handicaps’ in the EU, drawing attention to, amongst other obstacles, the EU’s ‘regulatory burden’. EUDR is a masterclass in regulatory burden. Without real change to the legislation as it currently stands, readers in Europe may well find their cultural horizon looking more like an empty bookshelf.