Paper with a purpose

Danish publishing house Verve not only has an opinion on what is to be written in the books it publishes, but also on how they should be made.

Verve is a new publishing house that wishes to make its views known – both in respect of the content of the books and the way they are made.

Verve has published titles by the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the murdered Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto and Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

The publishing house is not run on the basis of any particular political view, but it expects its writers to possess creative power and a desire to influence the world. Verve operates in a niche market and is directed at a customer segment with clear-cut ideas about what it wants to read.

Watch a film about Verve Books

Attitude towards production
As a publishing house favouring opinion-based content, Verve also has very clear views on how the books are to be produced. The books are therefore made using recycled paper and environmentally-friendly glue, and are printed at the most environmentally-friendly printing houses in Denmark.

Several of the books also have environmental certification such as the Nordic eco-labelling scheme "the Swan", FSC or Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C). Verve was the first publishing house in Denmark to print books on wood-free paper. However, the publishing house never compromises on the design and quality of the books.

Having founded Verve in February 2008, Maria Hammershøy set about bringing authors to the publishing house. She also began to look into how the books could be produced without detriment to the environment – a project that turned out to be more difficult than first imagined. Many printing houses claimed that they met environmental standards (such as ISO 14001), but only a few had the paper to prove it.

Difficult to convince suppliers
Recycled paper and new environmentally-friendly products in ink and glue were – and still are – relatively unheard of in Denmark, and it has required major input on Verve's part to persuade the printing houses to incorporate these environmentally-friendly alternatives in the production.

In her quest to find environmentally-friendly suppliers, Maria Hammershøy discovered Dalum Papir A/S, which produces some of the world's most environmentally-friendly recycled paper. In order to convince the printing houses, Verve had to have several trial prints made using different combinations of environmentally-friendly paper, glue and ink.