plenty mag

not to far away from that rolling stone magazine with obama on the cover that i referenced in a previous blog lie another magazine titled 'plenty' that caught my attention. i thought it very cool that there was a magazine that focused solely on "going green." its pages were filled with articles about environmentally smart ways to go greener. topics included hydrogen cars, clothing made from recycled materials, the right foods to eat based on how they were grown, etc.

i thought to myself for a moment - what a great magazine & how wonderful to see something like this. then i pondered, if this is all about going green why am i looking at a magazine filled with pages & pages of paper? shouldn't this magazine be in digital format if the creators behind it really mean what they say about being green?

when having some time after work today i took at look at plenty's website to learn more. while happy to see that they do produce a magazine that is environmentally conscience - see statement below regarding how plenty takes their mission seriously & practices what they preach. but isn't it still wrong that this magazine isn't in digital format only? if plenty was distributed via digital format only there would be so much less machinery involved to develop the content in this magazine, there wouldn't be bounds & bounds of paper (recycled or not) for printing, there wouldn't be any printing or print machines running that use energy & require A/C for cooling. let's not forget the distribution involved in getting this magazine to the many different retailers - mail planes, trucks, etc. burning all types of fuel.

when i think more about how the digital age can help reduce so many negative things affecting our environment i'm frustrated to think about why we don't enforce such approaches. all music & movies should be downloaded, all software should be downloaded too, all magazines, bills, books, etc. could all live in soft form & require little to no paper, manufacturing, & the delivery to get these products to market. the digital age we say we are in could bring such relief to a number of things that negatively impact our environment every day - so why aren't this approached being enforced?

comments from plenty magazine:

"we take our mission seriously and practice what we preach. we offer a digital version of the magazine. our paper is 85-100 percent recycled and contains 20-30 percent post-consumer material. we also offset our carbon footprint (the energy used to print the magazine and run our offices) with green mountain energy. oh, and our website is carbon neutral as well."