How green are we?

Or repurpose it. Designer Wary Meyers crafted this chandelier.

Photo: warymeyers.com

As with the great majority of glossy magazines, the paper in this issue of Time Out New York has never seen the inside of a recycling plant. In fact, the countless magazines printed in America kill an estimated 35 million trees a year, enough to make even the concept of a “Green issue” a contradiction in terms. The publisher of Vanity Fair, for instance, was lambasted by environmentalists last year for printing its first-ever green issue on nonrecycled paper.

Yet until this decade, a publisher who wanted glossy pages that were strong, thin, light and opaque (so the images from one side of the page don’t bleed into the other) had little choice but to buy virgin fiber. (Virgin refers to paper manufactured from new pulp or cotton.)

As recently as 2004, when this very magazine was shopping around for new paper, “our primary concerns were price and weight,” says Nestor Cervantes, TONY’s manufacturing director. “The demand for recycled paper was very limited, and we always found that the recycled sheets didn’t meet our standards.”

Fast-forward three years to 2007, when quality has greatly improved. TONY currently uses paper products that are made with fibers from sustainable managed forests. But Cervantes continues to look for decent recycled products, and come September, the monthly TONY Kids and the TONY Student Guide will be printed on 80–100

percent post-consumer recycled paper from a German company called Leipa. (As with hybrid cars, foreign firms are far ahead of their American counterparts on green technology.) If the Leipa paper supply proves reliable, the weekly TONY could also make the switch, though the magazine is also aware of the irony: importing paper from across the pond increases our carbon footprint.

Frank Locantore directs a program with Co-op America to teach magazine publishers the benefits of switching to recycled paper. He’s heard “myths” from paper companies about recycled paper actually being worse for the environment, but says that’s only because they lack the facilities to cost-effectively make it themselves.

“Recycled paper production requires less energy overall, diverts paper waste from landfills and incinerators, emits fewer greenhouse gases, uses less water and keeps trees in the forest,” Locantore says. Yet one man’s paper is another man’s toilet tissue. Adding to the complexity, part of the responsibility lies with you, the reader, who should recycle this magazine, and entire countries, who should develop long-term policies about sustainable forests (you can’t keep recycling the same stuff indefinitely).

“An article like this is very honest and helpful to the movement overall,” Locantore says. “My fear is that we could be having this same conversation a year from now, and nothing will have changed.”