New York - Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, today announced that continued progress has been made toward the company-wide goal of strengthening its sustainable paper procurement practices and increasing the percentage of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and post-consumer waste (PCW) recycled paper purchased. In January of 2008, Scholastic announced goals for 2012 to increase its purchase of FSC-certified paper for its publications to 30% and its use of recycled paper to 25%, of which 75% would be post-consumer waste.

Due to a reduction in the amount of paper purchased in 2009, combined with the loss of an FSC supplier, the amount of FSC-certified paper was slightly reduced from 2008. Scholastic found tonnage to replace the lost source in 2010, and anticipates a steady improvement in the coming year.

"Even through challenging economic times, Scholastic has been a champion of forest stewardship," said Corey Brinkema, President of FSC-US. "The results for 2009 and the development of new sources of FSC certified paper demonstrate their continued industry leadership in tapping FSC certified sources."

In 2009, Scholastic purchased 70,279.2 tons of paper of which 12,121 tons, or 17.25%, was FSC-certified, up from 3.6% in 2007. In addition, 13,920 tons, or 19.8%, of the paper purchased was produced from recovered fiber, up from 13.5% in 2007, and of that amount, 11,078 tons, or 79.6%, was produced from PCW fiber, up from 80.7% in 2007.

"Scholastic continues to be at the forefront of environmental performance in this industry," said Tyson Miller, Director of Green Press Initiative. "Beyond their efforts to continually improve their book manufacturing related goals, they are also tackling the challenge of eliminating Endangered Forest fiber from the supply-chain and contributing greatly to industry innovation in many other areas."

"In our second year of work toward our paper procurement goals, we continued to make progress and position ourselves as an industry leader in environmentally responsible practices," said Maureen O'Connell, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer of Scholastic. "We are well on our way to achieving the goal we aim for in 2012, and we anticipate that 2010 will bring us even closer to it."