I was looking through a magazine this week and was a little surprised at what I saw on one of the pages.
It was a logo that read "Please Recycle This Magazine. Remove Inserts or Samples Before Recycling". I
thought that was pretty cool. I was going to recycle this magazine anyway, but I know that magazines
aren't exactly the first thing you think of that can be easily recycled. And here is a little reminder
to that fact. More and more cities are taking and recycling magazines.
As it turns out this logo is part of the Magazine Publishers of America Please Recycle Campaign.
The key objectives of the campaign are to overcome the lack of public awareness that magazines can be
recycled in the vast majority of communities in the U.S. and, thereby, increase the percentage of used
magazines that are recycled. For maximum impact, it will be important that the logo be displayed in a
consistent and easy-to-find location inside the magazine for instance on the masthead or at the bottom
of the table of contents. Look to see if it's in your favorite magazine.
Most domestic curbside and drop-off recycling programs now accept
magazines as well as a wide variety of other materials (e.g., catalogs, direct mail, phone books), yet
awareness of this capacity and participation in these programs has lagged in many communities. Because of this,
MPA has begun this nation-wide campaign.
Today only about 20 percent of magazines are recycled from the home, even though at least two-thirds
of the population has access to magazine recycling in their community. Increasing magazine recycling
will reduce the amount of new fiber that must be obtained from wood, meaning that fewer trees can be
harvested to produce a given quantity of paper or board product.
My neighborhood recycling program has been taking magazines for years. There was a time when they
did not. Hopefully, more local recycling centers will be recycling not only magazines, but more paper and plastic products.
Recycle those magazines!
