Simple Ways Wednesdays – Episode 10

Posted by A. Caleb Hartley on September 24th, 2008 filed in Simple Ways, paper

Consider digital versions of your magazine subscriptions

The paperless world promised by computers sure does use a lot of paper.  If your office is anything like mine, you have people printing emails – often many emails – and then just leaving the paper on the printer, forgetting all about it.  Even though we have a digital copy of nearly every document ever sent to us, businesses and individuals just don’t feel quite right unless there is also a hard copy filed away somewhere.

And then there are magazines.  There are trade magazines which are often offered for free to anyone who works in a specific industry.  These magazines are very easy to subscribe to (and often hard to STOP subscribing to), which means that businesses generally receive many copies of the same issue, when only a couple would suffice.  We also all have our own personal subscriptions.  Trade magazines have begun to offer electronic versions, which, if used, cuts down significantly in trash generated by businesses, as well as virgin paper used to print the hard copy version of the magazine.

But what can be done about the personal magazine subscriptions that come to your home?  Enter Zinio.  Zinio offers a pretty substantial number of popular magazines in a digital format.  When you subscribe to a magazine, you have two options:

1. You can view the magazines through the Zinio website – instantly.  No waiting for the issue to be mailed to your house or to pick it up on the newsstand.  You will need to be connected to the internet to use this option.
2. Download and install the Zinio Reader – this option allows you to download the issues of the magazine onto your computer. They will be available anytime even if you are not connected to the Internet.

Zinio actually does have some trade magazines available as well: http://www.mercurymagazines.com/pr1/105/10501

Here are a few of the environmental magazines available through Zinio:

• Ode
• Good
• Yoga Journal
• Green Source

Additionally, here is a post on Sustainablog that includes a review of someone who sampled Zinio’s service and what she thought about it.

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

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Do you use any digital subscriptions? Would you consider doing so? Why or why not? Deliver your opinions to the comment section and tell people what you think!

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