‘The Guardian’ Launches Print Bookaizine (mediapost.com)

Fourth Quarter Summar: *GAAP Results: Revenue of $546 million (+2%), Operating Income of $58 million (+14%), and EPS of $0.76 (+4%). Full Year Summary: *GAAP Results: Revenue of $2,083 million (+7%), Operating Income of $219 million (+18%), EPS of $2.62 (-0.4%), and Cash Provided by Operating Activities of $339 million (-6%) *Free Cash Flow of$223 million, down 13% due to one-time items in prior year *Digital Products and Tech-Enabled Services: 83% of total revenue *Recurring Revenue: 58% of total revenue

If you buy a Lego set today, the toy bricks come packed in tiny numbered plastic bags. Every year, the toy manufacturer uses hundreds of millions of those bags. But the company is starting to phase out single-use plastic, with the goal of making its packaging sustainable by 2025—and those bags are a big part of it. Next year, it will begin rolling out an alternative, with bricks packed in Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper instead. “We want to ensure recycling our bags is as easy as possible for builders,” says Tim Brooks, vice president of environmental responsibility at the Lego Group. “Plastic recycling facilities are not very common and differ from country to country, which is why we chose to make the bags out of recyclable paper.” The company tested new packaging options extensively, searching for something that would be sustainable but also strong enough to hold Lego bricks, easy to pack in boxes, and something that children liked to use. “We tested about 15 different prototypes with hundreds of children and parents but explored many more, including those made from recycled plastic and even paper made from stone,” Brooks says.

Learning technology company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to divest HMH Books & Media, its consumer publishing business, to HarperCollins Publishers, a division of News Corp for a cash purchase price of $349 million. The divestiture enables HMH to focus singularly on K–12 education and accelerate growth momentum in digital sales, annual recurring revenue and free cash flow while paying down a significant portion of its debt.