Green Reading

Nearly 400 Barnes and Noble and Hastings Books and Music stores nationwide will run in-store promotions highlighting magazines that use recycled paper under a push by Co-op America’s Magazine PAPER Project and Next Steps Marketing.

The “Green Paper for People and Planet” promotion will occupy prominent fixtures within these stores with special sinage to highlight the magazines’ commitment to the environment. Each publication featured in these fixtures uses recycled paper with at least 30 percent post-consumer content.

Six magazines that used recycled paper—Shape, Fast Company, Mother Jones, REadyMade, Nickelodeon Magazine and Body + Soul—will be prominently featured during November in 153 Hastings Books and Music stores.

Barnes and Noble has committed to offering 10 slots for magazines that use recycled paper at a heavily discounted rate with special sinage in their top 240 stores in January. This promotion will roll out more widely in April 2008 in conjunction with Earth Day.

According to Magazine PAPER Project Director Frank Locantore, “The Hastings and Barnes and Noble promotions are a great way to introduce magazine readers nationwide to leading publications in their field that use recycled paper. When magazines tell their readers that they are using recycled paper, publishers are rewarded with deeper loyalty. Readers are increasingly supportive of magazines that use environmentally responsible paper, giving those publishers a competitive advantage for advertising dollars.”

According to the promotion’s organizers, if the entire North American magazine industry used just 30 percent post-consumer recycled paper, it would produce the following results:

• 1.4 million tons of wood would be saved, or the equivalent of 10 million trees;
• 6.2 million BTU’s of energy would be conserved, or the equivalent of the  energy used to power 68,960 homes in a year;
• 1.7 billion pounds of greenhouse gases would not be released into the atmosphere, or the equivalent of greenhouse gases emitted by 153,894 cars in a year;
• 3.4 billion gallons of wastewater would not be produced, or the equivalent of 5,113 Olympic-sized swimming pools; and
• 760,160,370 pounds of solid waste would be conserved, or the equivalent of 27,149 fully-loaded garbage trucks.

More information is available at www.magazinepaper.org.