The FOLIO: Green Report

of Backpacker, told attendees of the Independent Magazine Advisory Group conference earlier this year that as a result, Backpacker was able to reduce its carbon usage 12 percent and now runs a “more efﬁcient and proﬁtable business.” Staff travel, he said, was a surprisingly large contributor to the magazine’s carbon footprint—some 9 percent. “Airplane travel is devastating,” Dorn said. But the biggest opportunity to slash the magazine’s CO2 usage was in paper, which took up 48 percent of Backpacker’s footprint in 2007. Backpacker switched to a high-bulk, lower basis weight paper stock, which Dorn says also had a “pass-along value in printing and distribution.” TAKEAWAYS Green Publishing Standards: Devote 10 percent of your editorial in non-green issues to, well, green issues. Also, limit the amount of travel your editorial staff does to essential trips, and offset the carbon generated by these trips wherever possible. What You Can Do to Be Green: A top-to-bottom energy audit, like Backpacker’s, is perfect fodder for editorial content. IN APRIL, Discover mapped the lifecycle of each issue, to calculate its carbon footprint— 962 tons of CO2 for about 1 million monthly copies. The magazine vowed to purchase a carbon offset for $4,796 from Carbonfund.org. Here’s how it broke down: • Discover’s staff puts out 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide on travel each month. Ofﬁce energy use adds another 8.7 tons. • Shipping the 348,000 pounds of paper needed every month emits 13.7 tons of CO2. • Harvesting and transporting the trees to the mill adds 22 tons. The 8 tons of 50-percent-recycled magazine inserts adds 20 tons. • At the printing plant, producing one month’s edition of the magazine adds 52 tons of CO2. Ink adds 9.6 tons. • The 540-mile journey from the printing plant to a distribution facility outside Chicago adds 4.7 tons of CO2. • From Chicago to other distribution centers and on to postal facilities around the country adds 10.6 tons of CO2. • The trip to local post ofﬁces and mailboxes accounts for another 16 tons of CO2. • For newsstand copies, the trucking footprint to each state and Canada adds an additional 5.8 tons of CO2. • Trafﬁc from wholesalers to retailers adds 2.3 tons of CO2. • Add 176 tons of CO2 for recycling and landﬁlling. SOURCE: Discover Discover’s Carbon Footprint foliomag.com | October 2008 FOLIO: http://www.Carbonfund.org http://www.imirus.com http://www.imirus.com http://www.foliomag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The FOLIO: Green Report

Folio Green Report What Does it Mean to be Green? Production Operations Editorial Distribution Events Marketing Digital One Publisher's Green Checklist

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.