Our Environment

We have a responsibility to understand and manage the impact of our operations on our shared environment, to build a sustainable business and contribute towards a sustainable future. We continue our work to reduce our environmental footprint and impact, which in turn helps build resilience in our operations to climate-related risks.

2025/2026 Achievements

Key milestones achieved in 2025/2026 include:

• A Bloomsbury successfully completed the move from Macmillan Distribution to Hachette UK Distribution.
• A Bloomsbury completed the full version of the CDP Climate Change Questionnaire and Forest Questionnaire.
• A Bloomsbury received a B score from CDP for our 2024/2025 Climate Change disclosure, demonstrating CDP’s assessment we take “coordinated action on climate change”. We increased our CDP Forest score from a C to a B-, indicating our continued improvement in this area.
• A Bloomsbury’s Carbon Literacy Course completed by 20% of UK staff.
• A Bloomsbury’s Board approved our updated Environmental Policy and strategic ambition around climate change.
• A In collaboration with Octopus Energy, Bloomsbury launched an electric vehicle (EV) salary sacrifice scheme for staff.
• A Sponsored the planting and protection of trees with the Woodland Trust alongside support to protect UK seas through a donation to Surfers Against Sewage.
• A Continued to contribute to industry sustainability groups raising our collective voice to drive change.

Scope 1 and 2

We have set targets for our operational footprint (Scope 1 and 2) in line with the Paris Agreement and have committed to a 46% reduction in emissions from base year 2019/2020 to 2030. We aim to use 100% renewable energy at our offices where possible. For sites where this is not possible or practicable, we have purchased Renewable Energy Certificates, meaning that 100% of the energy purchased during the year was renewable.

We have reduced our Scope 1 and 2 market-based emissions by 48% in 2025/2026 versus 2024/2025. We have also seen a 24% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 location-based emissions, showing that even without the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates, we are taking steps to reduce energy consumption.

Scope 3

We have also set a Scope 3 target to achieve a 20% reduction in emissions across our supply chain by 2035 from 2019/2020.

In 2025/2026, we engaged further with key suppliers in respect of sustainability issues which has enabled us to better understand the progress they are making in their own efforts to reduce carbon emissions associated with their operations and how we can partner with them to achieve Bloomsbury’s own targets. In 2025/2026 we continued our paper audit, improving the accuracy of Bloomsbury’s carbon footprint.

CDP Climate Change and Forestry Questionnaires

In 2025/2026 we achieved a CDP climate change score of B for the fourth year running, which demonstrates our coordinated action on climate issues. In 2025/2026 we continued to respond to the CDP forest questionnaire as part of the ongoing assessment of biodiversity impact linked to our operations and supply chain. Our increased ability to trace the source of our paper resulted in achieving an improved score of B-, up from C last year. CDP has also given us a score of A- for our Supplier Engagement Assessment (SEA).

 

Please see our Annual Report for more detail.