Read All About It

E: The Environmental Magazine, Nov, 1998 by Catherine Macauley

Talk about win-win: Two grassroots groups, one in Washington and the other in North Carolina, have found ways to channel magazine waste and help community literacy and social programs at the same time. By collecting unsold magazines and putting them into the hands of new readers, paper once destined for the shredder or dumpster is being given a second life in the public mainstream.

Working with a Seattle magazine distributor called Small Changes, Tim Bernthal of Magazines A Gain used a $14,000 waste reduction grant from Seattle Public Utilities to create a program that re-uses and distributes nearly 4,000 magazines a month to more than 40 Seattle-area organizations.

"It's a very doable idea," says Bernthal. "The first step is to find a magazine distributor who is willing to perform a community service. If you can get that done, you can start small and make the connection with the end users."

The genesis of the project was four years ago, when David Spiekerman of Small Changes decided that newsstand returns could be put to better use. Approximately 60 percent of all magazines displayed on newsstands go unsold, and are often discarded In an effort to find recipients for his company's unused periodicals, Spiekerman began contacting area schools and social centers.

What started out as the byproduct of one man's social conscience has been expanded into a community service project that distributes more than 50,000 unsold magazines each year to school groups, literacy programs and food banks. Bernthal wants to expand the program by adding more magazine distributors, and acquiring permission from more publishers for their titles to be re-used.

A different type of recycling program is giving new life to used magazines in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Magazine racks have been installed at garbage drop-off sites across Orange County to give residents easy access to the title of their choice, or drop off those they've already read. "It's a low-cost program--you need two sheets of plywood and a couple of two-by-fours," says Joe Clayton, field operations coordinator of Orange Community Recycling. "The public really appreciates it."

The program has been so successful that racks have also been erected at schools, malls, ball parks and even the dog pound. Clayton says that the hottest magazine in terms of demand is National Geographic, with Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek and Atlantic Monthly following close behind.

The only problem Clayton has encountered is dealing with the kids who discovered they could dig through the discards and find pornography. "Now we have someone who goes by and removes all the accessible porn from the top," he says. CONTACT: Chapel Hill Department of Solid Waste Management 396 North Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2113/(919)968-2800, ext. 166; Magazines AGain, 6060 Second Avenue NW, Seattle, WA 98107/(206)783-3088.