Issues > Green Guide Premier Issue, Spring 2008 > Green Guide Magazine Premier Issue: Q & A with Founder Wendy Gordon

Green Guide Magazine Premier Issue: Q & A with Founder Wendy Gordon

This March, the premier issue of the Green Guide magazine will appear on newsstands.  Founder Wendy Gordon talks about the new magazine and its direction.

Why change from a newsletter to a magazine?

In the early nineties, faxable newsletters, of which the Green Guide was one, were very popular and provided bite-size bits of information. We added the web site in 2002. It wasn't until recently that we started thinking about a magazine, but as we did, it came to make more and more sense. We want to reach people where they are—some like to get there information on line, others from television, others read magazines, and get them at newsstands, in bookstores like Borders and even in Whole Foods. It's about being where people go to get information.

Wouldn't it be more green to go digital-only?

We've always had a digital version of the Green Guide. So for the magazine, we partnered with Texterity to create an online edition, which gives all the text and ads in the print version, but in some ways is better because everything is hyperlinked. It's a very dynamic, paper-free version of the magazine. And it will be available February 28, a week before the print issue! See www.thegreenguide-magazine.com for details.

As for print, there's a debate about the paper that should go into magazines. Ours is Forest Stewardship Council-certified, which means the wood pulp comes from well-managed forests and is tracked at every step on the way from harvesting through processing until it reaches the printer. Ten percent of our paper content comes from post-consumer-waste recycled content—there is paper with higher recycled content, but we value FSC's commitment to forest conservation. The ink, which contains no heavy metals, was created by Quad graphics and derives from renewable sources including soy, corn and linseed.

Why did National Geographic launch such a different magazine?

National Geographic's mission is to inspire people to care about the planet. It's the mission of the Green Guide to provide people with the tools to do this. We are a research-based service invested in our reporting and we set high standards for ourselves that are consistent with National Geographic's approach. They, like us, take the tough science and make it available for lay people. We're a natural addition to the National Geographic team; you see the Green Guide is just a part of an NG-wide initiative to provide more green content in books, on television or in magazines, all working together to inspire and engage people in positive ways to protect the planet.

What makes this a good time for the Green Guide to reach out and expand?

Americans have been behind the curve in appreciating the human-environment-health connection, but finally we are waking up to the fact that our actions affect the environment and the environment can in turn affect us. I think the uptick in the frequency and severity of storms, droughts, floods and hurricanes may have knocked some sense into us, and gotten us to appreciate how much our actions, the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, can affect our environment, our health, our everyday lives. We here in the US were slow to connect the dots, but now that we have, more and more people are asking "what can we do?" That's made our work at the Green Guide that much more important.

Yet the Green Guide has always worked to give people the good reasons to go green. We don't use guilt or suggest your kids are going to die. We've focused on groups like moms and dads and issues like health because they are real drivers for change. We've been consistently practical, considering all of us are busy and live on budgets, and make it our job to find those real ways to make responsible choices in our daily lives. What we have found, time and time again, is that all it takes is ordinary people changing everyday tasks—even something as simple as asking your supermarket to stock a more responsibly made product —to make for a better planet.

The Green Guide will be available nationwide from March 4 wherever magazines are sold.