Turning the Page: Environmental Impacts of the Magazine Industry and Recommendations for Improvement

This study, by a publishing trade association and two nonprofits, details an array of environmentally unsound industry practices, including the 2.9 billion unread magazines that are destroyed each year and the fact that less than 5 percent of magazines use recycled paper. The study concludes that if all magazines published in the U.S. switched to at least 10 percent post-consumer content, the resulting annual savings would be over 540,000 tons of trees – an amount equal to what would be used to make copy paper for 11.6 million people per year. The switch to 10 percent post-consumer content also would save enough energy to power 23,000 households, reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to those produced by 56,000 cars, and eliminate solid wastes equivalent to the garbage produced by 66,000 households.