[GreenYes] Re: [GreenYes]Not-so-green magazines

[David Biddle <Dbiddle@no.address>]

This article is interesting and continuing a trend. There is one use of the
word ³recycling² in it and that is to name ³a nonprofit called the National
Recycling Coalition.² The author mostly speaks nebulously about ³sustainable
forestry practices.²

Now, I went to the Coop America site and found a wealth of information on
the need for using recycled paper, but it¹s just not clear to me whether all
the big magazines cited in the Fortune article are using recycled content or
just using ³environmentally responsible² paper. I also went to the Forest
Ethics site (http://www.forestethics.org), and while they certainly directly
offer information on recycled-content paper, much of their work is centered
on sustaining the forestry industries and making them more responsible. I¹m
not complaining here, just trying to figure out where recycling is going in
the whole mix. Seems like it¹s getting lost a bit.

Db
-- 
David Biddle, Executive Director
<http://www.blueolives.blogspot.com>
Greater Philadelphia Commercial Recycling Council
P.O. Box 4037
Philadelphia, PA 19118

215-247-3090 (desk)
215-432-8225 (cell)

<http://www.gpcrc.com>

Read In Business magazine to learn about sustainable
businesses in communities across North America!
Go to: <http://www.jgpress.com/inbusine.htm>

on 2/27/07 3:32 PM, Gary Liss at gary@no.address wrote:

> This is a great article highlighting an opportunity for Zero Waste communities
> to get involved.  If you're interested in helping with the campaign to get
> magazines to really go Green, contact:
> * Coop America Magazine Paper Project, go
> to:http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/woodwise/publishers/magazines/index.cfm
> or contact Frank Locantore, WoodWise Program Director, 1612 K St NW, Suite
> 600, Washington, DC 20006, (800) 58-GREEN, <frank@no.address>
> * Susan Kinsella, Executive Director, Conservatree, Phone -415/561-6526,
> E-mail Fax - 509/756-6987, susan@no.address, skype
> -susanekinsella,http://www.conservatree.org <http://www.conservatree.org/>
> They can highlight how you could make a difference with this campaign.
> 
> Gary
> 
>> From: "Eric Lombardi" <eric@no.address>
>> To: "'Greenyes'" <GreenYes@no.address>
>> Subject: [GreenYes] FW: [PaperNet] Not-so-green magazines
>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:00:37 -0700
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: papernetwork@no.address [ mailto:papernetwork@no.address
>> <mailto:papernetwork@no.address> ]
>> On Behalf Of Conrad MacKerron
>> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 4:55 PM
>> To: papernetwork@no.address
>> Subject: [PaperNet] Not-so-green magazines
>> 
> Not-so-green magazines
> Some glossies cover the environment, but cover up their own practices, says
> Fortune's Marc Gunther.
> 
> By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
> February 22 2007: 9:34 AM EST
> 
> http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/21/magazines/fortune/pluggedin_Gunther_greenmags.
> fortune/index.htm?section=money_topstories
> 
> NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The New Yorker won awards for its stories about
> climate change and Vanity Fair publishes a "green" issue, but just try to
> find parent company Conde Nast's environmental policy. You can't.
> 
> Newsweek ran a cover on "The Greening of America," but its owner, The
> Washington Post Co., won't identify the magazine's paper suppliers or say
> where its paper comes from. Maybe The Post's Bob Woodward should
> investigate.
> 
> As for Hearst, which publishes Oprah's magazine and Cosmopolitan, the
> privately held firm is developing an environmental policy to govern its
> paper buying. But the company won't provide details.
> 
> "The magazine industry's hypocrisy runs deep," asserts Todd Paglia,
> executive director of Forest Ethics, an environmental group that protects
> forests by holding companies accountable for their paper buying.
> 
> "Conde Nast," Paglia goes on, "is seemingly unaware of the strangeness of
> doing a high-profile series in The New Yorker on climate change, while
> exacerbating the problem by using environmentally irresponsible paper."
> Conde Nast did not return emails or calls seeking comment.
> 
> The reluctance of publishers to talk about their environmental impact
> suggests that they aren't paying attention - or that they want to avoid it.
> That makes a project undertaken by a group of paper users - including the
> Time Inc. division of Time Warner (Charts), the German publisher Axel
> Springer, Random House UK, which is a unit of Bertelsmann, and packaging
> firm Tetra Pak - all the more unusual.
> 
> Those companies are all big customers of Stora Enso (Charts), a
> Finnish-Swedish paper, packaging and forest products giant based in London.
> With Stora Enso, they formed a partnership to track their supply chain into
> the heart of Russia's forests to try to insure that it is harvested in a
> sustainable way.
> 
> Ordinarily, I try not to write about Time Inc., which publishes Fortune and
> CNNMoney.com. This story is an exception because the company's environmental
> practices deserve recognition.
> 
> Time Inc. joined with Nike (Charts), Staples (Charts), Hewlett Packard
> (Charts) and the nonprofit group Metafore in 2003 to form the Paper Working
> Group to promote environmentally preferable paper. It worked with
> environmental groups to measure its greenhouse gas emissions, and set
> reduction targets. It discloses its paper suppliers and bought about 70
> percent of its paper from sources certified as sustainable during 2006, up
> from 25 percent four years earlier.
> 
> As the world's largest magazine publisher, Time Inc. acted partly to avoid
> becoming a target. (In 1994, Greenpeace activists protested the company's
> forestry practices by climbing the Time & Life Building in New York.) But
> its work also has been driven by the passion of David Refkin, a Bronx-born
> accountant who joined the company in 1982, took charge of its paper buying
> in the late 1980s and is now its director of sustainable development.
> 
> Cleaning up the supply chain
> Refkin, 49, has tracked the company's paper to the woods of Maine, Wisconsin
> and Michigan, in an effort to promote sustainable forestry. "I once went to
> Iron Mountain, Mich., to have breakfast with 375 loggers," he says. "They
> wanted to have me for breakfast."
> 
> Over the years, he has become an environmentalist. He is the board president
> of a nonprofit called the National Recycling Coalition and even nudged a
> friend who operates a Vermont ski resort to buy electricity from wind. "If
> you're in a business that depends on the weather," he reasons, "you ought to
> buy green power."
> 
> Refkin turned his attention to Russia because Stora Enso, a Time Inc.
> supplier, imports wood from Russia. The partners in a project called "From
> Russia With Transparency" identified two logging companies in Russia, and
> worked with them to improve their environmental practices so that they can
> obtain certification from the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent
> body. (One company, Russkiy Les, expects to be certified this year.) The
> group also tackled worker safety and corruption, both serious issues in
> Russia.
> 
> Americans, Germans, Brits, Finns, Swedes and Russians collaborated on the
> project. "How many wars have been fought between those countries?" Refkin
> mused. "The culture challenges were enormous." The American and European
> buyers had to be careful not to push around the Russian suppliers.
> 
> Two nonprofit groups, Transparency International and the Karelian Research
> Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, monitored the project. A detailed
> report on the project, as well as a video, can be found at
> www.tikhvinproject.ru/ <http://www.tikhvinproject.ru/> .
> 
> Why should publishers go to the trouble of cleaning up their supply chain?
> Florian Nehm, sustainability officer for Axel Springer, which publishes
> magazines and newspapers, said companies should be concerned not just about
> the visible quality of paper but its "invisible" quality as well - its
> environmental and social impact.
> 
> "There are 3,000 journalists working for Axel Springer," Nehm says. "They
> criticize everything and everyone, and they can only do that with
> credibility if the company that they work for has adequate standards of its
> own."
> 
> That should be a wake-up call to other publishers. Those who ignore
> environmental issues may be putting their reputations at risk.
> 
> Publishers will be happy to hear that Forest Ethics - which ran a successful
> campaign against the Victoria's Secret catalog and its parent company,
> Limited Brands (Charts), last year - says it will remain focused on
> catalogs, not magazines, for now. But Paglia says the group intends to look
> at magazines and their paper, perhaps as soon as next year.
> 
> ___________________
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Conrad MacKerron
> Director, Corporate Social Responsibility Program
> As You Sow Foundation
> 311 California St., San Francisco, CA 94104
> Phone: 415-391-3212, ext. 31
> Web: www.asyousow.org <http://www.asyousow.org/>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gary Liss       
> 916-652-7850    
> Fax: 916-652-0485
> www.garyliss.com <http://www.garyliss.com/>
> > 
> 


-- 
David Biddle, Executive Director
<http://www.blueolives.blogspot.com>
Greater Philadelphia Commercial Recycling Council
P.O. Box 4037
Philadelphia, PA 19118

215-247-3090 (desk)
215-432-8225 (cell)

<http://www.gpcrc.com>

Read In Business magazine to learn about sustainable
businesses in communities across North America!
Go to: <http://www.jgpress.com/inbusine.htm>



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