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From the San Francisco Chronicle November 14, 2002

No Rush To Recycle Paper

Friday has been officially proclaimed America Recycles Day. But it might be more accurate to call it America Does Not Recycle Day.

Recent news reports have detailed a slowdown in recycling across the country. And despite media images of recycling-crazed suburbanites, we never fully took to recycling in the first place.

For recycling to be truly effective, it must go full circle. What goes into those collection bins must be recycled into products we bring home from the store, and most often that does not happen. The most glaring example might be those magazines in the racks next to the checkout register.

Despite the myth that all paper today is recycled, less than 5 percent of magazine paper has any recycled content at all. This is even worse than the record of office and printing paper, less than 10 percent of which has any recycled content. (For California newspapers, the record is better, thanks to the state's recycled content law. About 70 percent of The Chronicle's pages, for instance, contain some amount of recycled paper.)

The magazine industry logs 35 million trees each year to make magazine paper -- that's the equivalent of logging an area the size of Rocky Mountain National Park. In addition to the environmental impacts of logging, paper production is a significant source of major greenhouse gases.

All that pollution and logging go to produce the millions of magazines enticingly arranged in bookstores and supermarkets. Even nature and travel magazines that should know better, such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Traveler and Sunset, use 100 percent virgin paper for almost all of their print run.

Why? Well, it's not for lacking a good supply of high-quality, competitively priced recycled paper. Take a look at Audubon and Sierra magazines, or even the Norm Thompson Outfitters catalog. They all feature shiny, glossy, white paper with 10 percent recycled content. That may not sound like a lot, but for magazine production, it's a significant difference.

Our interviews with mill managers have found that there is plenty of unused capacity, enough to print every magazine on 10 percent post-consumer recycled paper, with plenty left over for making recycled copying paper and more. In fact, the lack of demand is actually forcing some recycling mills to close.

Price isn't the issue, either. Sometimes recycled paper costs more, but often it doesn't. Many mills making high-quality papers sell their recycled papers at the same price as their virgin papers. And, given the low demand for recycled paper, it is not a stretch to imagine that recycled paper could be even less expensive if only more magazines demanded it, generating economies of scale.

Even our government is well ahead of the magazine industry in understanding the basic facts. The federal procurement guidelines that require agencies to use post-consumer recycled paper note that such paper is "high quality, widely available and cost-competitive."

So, if Audubon, Sierra and many other magazines can switch to recycled, why not everyone? The ugly truth is that most magazines don't care. And if they don't hear from the people who do care, these magazines won't have any incentive to switch.

On America Recycles Day, you can do your bit by telling your favorite magazine to print on recycled paper. And when you're buying paper for yourself, look for paper that includes recycled content. Recycling is easy. Just ask for it.

-Frank Locantore

Frank Locantore is director of the WoodWise project for Green America.

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