I have two tall stacks of glorious magazines on my shelf here in Taipei. I am proud of them. They are special to me. But as someone living in a very small room with limited space for dust-collecting objects, I need to get rid of them. Yes, so I have space for more magazines in the future.
I should just throw them into the recycling box, I know. But what a waste. There's still a lot that's readable and entertaining in these magazines. I want to pass them to others. So what if the issues are from last year, or maybe even last last year? They can still be enjoyed. The writing is still good. The articles still interesting. The humor still in tact. But you know how some people can be...
"Ew, this magazine is from 2005! Information from the past! I'm going to vomit!"
When I was in studying in Paris, I lugged a ridiculously heavy canvas bag filled with issues of GQ and Details from my dorm to Amsterdam so I wouldn't have to throw them out. (I was visiting a friend there. I'm not completely insane.) I gave the magazines to that friend. I don't know if he ever read them, but I felt better knowing they were being passed to someone else. Or at the very least, someone who was a guy and could read. The rest was out of my hands.
On my last trip to the States, I brought back just over 20 magazines. I've lent them to friends, old co-workers and my dad. (Dad read the Fortune and the 2007 issue of People's Sexiest Men Alive.) Next, these magazines will travel with me back to Sydney so I can lend them to other friends. So yes, Simone, you'll have the People in your hands soon.
Considering the amount of paper used to print them, I think magazines deserve a longer lifespan than just one week or one month. And each issue should be read by more people instead of most buying their own copies. Maybe there could be a concept like magazine carpooling, so if two people co-sign one magazine subscription, they get a discounted rate. That said, however, subscriptions prices in the States are dirt cheap as it is.
I understand the point of magazine publishing from a business perspective is to have high circulations, but that's in conflict with the environmental obligations of media corporations. I recently came across an article about the magazine publishing industry that was pretty sad. I can't find it right now, so I found another article on the same topic that's even more scary.
Here's an excerpt:
The amount of paper wasted each year by the magazine industry is truly astounding. Of the 4.7 billion magazines sent to newsstands every year, only 35 percent of them are actually purchased. That means 2.9 billion magazines are thrown out without having been touched by a reader.
"Most of the magazines are printed on virgin wood paper," explained John Anner, Executive Director of the Independent Press Association. "The trees are cut down, turned into magazines, immediately sent to the newsstands, and then go directly into the waste stream. Whether they are recycled or not doesn’t matter that much if all this waste is for no other purpose than cutting down forests," he added.
The study offered other sobering figures. Of the approximately 12 billion magazines printed annually in the U.S., over 95 percent are printed on 100 percent virgin paper. That results in more than 35 million trees being cut down each year.
Approximately 90 percent of those magazines are discarded within a year of publication, and only about 20 percent of these are recycled. That results in over 9 billion magazines being incinerated or landfilled yearly.
Knowing all this, the right thing to do would be to only buy magazines that are made from recycled or partially recycled paper. And I guess, to just read everything else at the newsagent or bookstore.
I was just thinking a few days ago that if I move to the States, the first thing I'd do is subscribe to a dozen magazines. Now I guess I better rethink that. Maybe I'll start or join a magazine co-op instead. A group of people who share magazine subscriptions. Or I'll live with people who like the same ones as I do.
There must be a better, guilt-free and environmentally responsible way to read print magazines. Someone's got to think of something sooner or later.
I made good use of the GQs you passed along to me on your last move from Taipei and they're still on file.
A mag co-op or exhange is a good idea, although it may be more suited to AUS where magazine subsriptions aren't so heavily discounted.
Posted by: Duck | Mar 02, 2007 at 12:11