Save the Virgins!

Turn over a new leaf...

With current options, every home, school, local copy center, or office supply store could use or offer eco-friendly paper. Even mass magazines no longer have to "publish and perish" with their paper choices. Unfortunately, most mass suppliers and purchasers of paper need some persuasion to green their paper choices. According to the Magazine Paper Project, less than 5% of all magazine paper have any recycled content at all. And the threat is not only to the forests, but to our health: nearly all paper used in the magazines is bleached with chlorine, a process that releases carcinogenic dioxins into the environment that eventually wind up in breast milk (see "Reducing Dioxin in Milk"). To reduce dioxins, we need to encourage the use of Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) paper in the magazine industry and for every paper purchase.

What You Can Do

• Check out The Green Guide's product report on paper to source environmentally improved paper for your home, school or office.
• Visit the Magazine Paper Project, and write a letter to the publisher of your choice (a sample is conveniently provided), urging the use of PCF and forest-friendly paper. The site provides a White Paper on the magazine industry, Turning the Page: Environmental Impacts of the Magazine Industry and Recommendations for Improvement, and a list of magazines that print on earth-friendly paper.
• Through Coop America's WoodWise Consumer Guide, you can write to Condé Nast, a major magazine publisher that has recently greened their office practices, and urge them to use more environmentally-friendly paper choices for the environment-celebrating Condé Nast Traveler magazine.
• Help is available at the Direct Marketing Association for reducing the amount of junk mail you receive. Coop America's WoodWise Consumer Guide also offers tips for reducing the amount of unwanted catalogs and mail that land in your mailbox.
• Visit your nearest copy shop, and demand that they make choices that help the environment, forests and human health. Tell them to stock their user-run copy machines with PCF recycled paper. Ask that they make recycled papers available across the board for all printing options. Point out that Kinko's has taken the lead in the industry, with their forest-based product procurement policy which emphasizes increasing percentages of post-consumer waste in their paper and honors branches that exceed Kinko's green standards with their Environmental Branch of the Year award.