Survey: What Do You Do With Your Old Magazines?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08.11.08
The Magazine Publishers of America are taking a lesson from the bottlers and their "America-Keep it Beautiful" campaign, and asking their readers to "please recycle" as if people with blue boxes didn't know that magazines are made of paper. "The key objectives of the campaign are to overcome the lack of public awareness that magazines can be recycled in the vast majority of communities in the U.S. and, thereby, increase the percentage of used magazines that are recycled."
Right. Like the bottlers who used the campaign to shift responsibility for dealing with waste from the manufacturer to the consumer, the magazine association looks for points for promoting recycling, while Jeff Bercovici of Portfolio tells us:
-newsstand sell-through is only 33%, resulting in 66% of all magazines on the stands being returned and pulped;
-publishers buy junk circulation from subscription agents to keep their ad rates artificially high, resulting in millions of unwanted copies being pushed each month on people who will never read them.
Since you are reading this online we are probably preaching to the converted, but there is a survey in here....
I tend to destroy any magazines I buy (I no longer have any subscriptions and just buy at the store as I see fit), by tearing out recipes or ideas. Any that I don't tear things out of, I sell at my local Half Price books to make a few cents (generally to buy something from their clearance racks). The ones that don't make the Half Price cut get placed in our recycling bin.
There is a bookcase just inside the door of our little public library, where magazines can be exchanged. I take some, I donate some - then I return what is in good condition, recycle those that are worn out. That way I only need a few subscriptions, and can read many different kinds.
I take mine to my gym so they can put them on their magazine rack.
The only magazines I buy are ones I want to keep. Usually they are science mags. I use them as references, and I often look back to issues several years old for particular articles.
Eventually, I recycle them, though
I drop mine off at the gym for other people to enjoy.
I save up my magazines and newspaper to use in the garden. I soak them in water then layer them under a top dressing of mulch. It makes a great weed barrier, and as it breaks down it creates more topsoil -- something I need with my heavy clay soil.
I work with kids, so I save them and use them to create collages out of.
I give away,leave at the docs. office, leave at work, And recycle.
I've been trying to find somewhere local that wants magazines in Vancouver; my wife and I have a fair number in good condition across a wide range of topics (general lifestyle, home, music, science, etc.) that we don't really know what to do with.
If we can't find someone who wants them, we'll end up recycling them (of course), but I would prefer that they can have another happy life and be reused in their current state.
I keep my magazines and archive them in boxes by magazine name and dates... anything I buy or subscribe to is important to me (woodworking magazines, as I am a woodworker), so therefore I only buy or subscribe to what I really want or need. Everything else I read online.
I do a variety of things for my discarded mags: doctor offices, my hairstylist, girlfriends, daughter, very little needs to go to recycling. Luckily, friends and daughter pass them on to their friends and doctors, so the mags have a very happy lifespan.
I throw my Mother Earth News magazines in the garbage after I read them. Why? Is that bad?