Sustainability: Digital Magazine Subscriptions & Books

Even though I enjoy reading blogs, and such online, I still love to read good, old fashioned print - whether it be magazines or books. Yet, after a number of 2 for one special magazine subscriptions, I have become frustrated at the amount of magazines that I have accumulated. These stats below got me really thinking of their impact.

Millions of trees cut down a year = more CO2 in the air
Manufacturing 1 ton of newsprint to fulfill circulation of the Minneapolis Star Tribune translates into 4,472 trees' worth of paper every week, or 232,544 trees per year.

Forty percent of the Star Tribune's newsprint comes from recycled material, 5 percent higher than the national average. (American newspapers lag behind their European counterparts in this regard—the average for British papers, for example, is 80 percent.) More than 57 percent of American newsprint originates in Canada, mostly the Canadian Boreal Forest; clearcutting being the preferred technique. Though many logging companies replant felled trees on a one-to-one basis, environmentalists believe these replacement forests (which are often harvested once the trees reach a certain age) are not as effective at storing carbon dioxide as old-growth forests.

Once the logs have been cut, the most energy-intensive phase of the process begins. According to this 2007 report (PDF) from the Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, newsprint production accounts for roughly two-thirds of a paper's energy consumption. Wood pulping is perhaps the "dirtiest" part of this process (PDF); overall, the Department of Energy estimates that the paper manufacturing industry is the nation's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, trailing only the chemical, petroleum and coal, and primary metals industries.

Finally, you've got distribution costs—trucking all those copies to newsstands and homes, then trucking them back to recycling centers or landfills. About 69 percent of American newspapers are recycled, with about one-third of that newsprint getting shipped to China.

The end result? According to a 2006 report, a single copy of the British tabloid the Daily Mirror, weighing in at 6.4 ounces, accounts for 6.1 ounces of carbon emissions.

Be Mindful of Electricity Uses of Computer as Well
Paper may be an energy hog, but so, too, are the servers and desktops that make online newspapers possible. Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have estimated that the average server consumes 4,505 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, a figure that includes the power used to cool the hardware. (The average American household uses a bit more than 10,000 kWh of electricity annually.) It's not clear how many servers are required to power the typical online newspaper, but if you factor in the third-party ad servers, it's likely in the hundreds.

You also have to account for the electricity required to power the end user's computer. The Swedish report cited above calculated that a person using a 160-watt desktop with a 120-watt screen who reads an online paper for 30 minutes actually does more environmental damage than if he or she had purchased the dead-tree edition. Granted, this report involved 40-page tabloid newspapers, and the wattage figures are a little outdated. You can also quibble over the assumptions about the environmental cost of disposing of computer hardware, which is factored into the Swedish equation—wouldn't we still buy (and throw away) computers if there were no online newspapers?

Some claim that the paper will decompose very slowly and become fossil fuel, rather than releasing its carbon into the atmosphere, but by the time of that transition to petroleum is complete, our species will probably and hopefully be well beyond the oil era. ) Ideally, copies of the magazine are recycled. But even if an old
The Lantern isn't quite convinced by this argument; he thinks it underestimates the long-term consequences and carbon emissions of logging in old-growth forests, as well as the nasty pollution created by the wood pulping industry. So, despite the intriguing Swedish report, the Lantern maintains that online newspapers come out ahead of their dead-tree Sunday rivals.

That conclusion is subject to revision, though, if American newspapers start adopting more sustainable environmental practices. The Green Press Initiative, for example, recommends that publishers increase their use of recycled fibers to 50 percent of the total by 2012 and use only virgin fibers that have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

By the time the industry gets around to making those changes, however, we may have already entered the age of the ubiquitous e-reader. And at this point, no one really knows how the proliferation of such hardware will affect the planet. But we do know that keeping as many trees alive is better for our environment, us as humans, and countless other species.

Trees can slow down the greenhouse effect.
University of Missouri-Columbia scientists conclude that "The average tree absorbs about 13 pounds of carbon and carbon dioxide per year. Just an acre's worth of agroforestry (rowing trees and agricultural crops on the same land) plantings, using a 10' by 40' tree spacing, would tie up 1,500 pounds of carbon dioxide over the life of those trees," explains Bruce Cutter, a forestry researcher. "Then, if these trees were made into useful, permanent products, the bulk of the carbon dioxide in these trees would be unavailable to contribute to global warming and its possible consequences."

Some scientists project increases of three-eight degrees in global surface temperature by 2030. That is because levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) are expected to almost double, from the current 350 to 600 parts per million.

The solution, says Cutter, is to take advantage of a basic equation that every beginning biology student learns: Trees and other green plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen in their metabolic processes. "Foresters estimate that some 800,000,000 acres of land are available worldwide for reforestation. If we were to use agroforestry practices on these lands, the trees would absorb 600,000,000 tons of carbon and carbon dioxide each year. On a local scale, if a single landowner who farms 2,000 acres were to place the land into an agroforestry management regime, those trees would absorb 1,400 tons per year of carbon and carbon dioxide. To be sure, the landowner would see a reduction in crop yields, but he or she would also have reduced costs of planting, fertilizing, and so on."

So next time, you think of buying or subscribing to a magazine or newspaper that you are barely going to glance at, think of your carbon footprint and it's long-term effects, and weigh if its content will enrich your life and be worth those effects.

Sources of data: http://www.slate.com/id/2185143/ and http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-15511370.html