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

1. You are interested in living a more “green” lifestyle, each for your own reasons.
2. You are tech savvy enough to subscribe to, read, or even write your own blog.

Knowing these two things makes it easy to suggest the next Simple Way to improve your environmental footprint:

Use paperless billing for your monthly expenses wherever possible

Take a look at your bills the next time they come in, or go to the website for the companies whose bills you receive each month.  Somewhere on the invoice, in the envelope (with all the wasteful flyers and inserts), or on the website, there will most likely be instructions on how to sign up for “paperless billing.”

Pay attention to how much paper you receive with each bill as they come in.  Multiply that amount of paper by the number of bills you receive, then multiply THAT by 12 months per year.  Now think about what you actually do with all that paper.  Me?  I throw it away (recycle it, actually, but it’s still a waste).

So you can see how much of a difference signing up for paperless billing can make!  Sign up today!

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley

How about Valentine’s Day cards? 

About 25% of the greeting cards sent in the course of a year are sent on Valentine’s Day, according to Green Living Tips.  That adds up to approximately one billion cards worldwide, says treehugger.com.  Most cards are made of virgin paper, which is very wasteful.

So this year, instead of sending or giving a standard Valentine’s Day card, how about sending a tree-free or recycled card? All it takes is a little bit of extra work while you are selecting a card.  Most cards will say right on the back of the card whether they are made from recycled or tree-free paper. 

Green Living Tips has a wonderful listing of tree alternatives that paper can be made out of.  Additionally, if you are looking at recycled cards instead of tree-free, try to find the highest post-consumer content card possible.  The post-consumer content amount tells you what percentage of the paper was made using paper that has already been used.  100% post-consumer content means that the paper that makes up the card was recycled completely from paper that has already lived through one “useful life,” and has been turned into another.

Here are a few places where tree-free or recycled (or otherwise green) cards may be purchased; not all of these links have Valentine’s cards specifically:

• Tree-Free Greetings
• Green Field Paper Company
• Bloomin’ Flower Cards
• Paporganics

Namaste,
A. Caleb Hartley