Canadian Forest Products Association President Avrim Lazar delivered an interesting speech at the American Magazine Conference last week. Click here for the Canadian Mags blog coverage. He talked about the environmental challenges of using paper and the risk of consumers turning against print.
People will feel that they are dinosaurs, that they are not with it because they are buying your magazine.
There is a growing discussion that environmental issues and not disruption by new technology which will present the biggest challenge to print media. It is an interesting issue for consideration.
This is a bit of a storm in a tea cup. Papers and Magazines aren’t the only papers products out there, there are many others which could be classed as less important.
I think the issue is manufacturing, not the actual products of which should be targeted. There are many new initiatives out there like the increase in cain growing for biofuels with waste that could be used with recycled pulp to lessen the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process.
Once you’ve read your paper or magazine can be good for the enviroment by being converted to compost to be put into areas with a high water table and salinity problems – Gizmos obviously can’t do that even though they can be recycled at a higher cost then paper products.
Considering in Australia we have amongst the highest recycling rates in the world I think culturally we are protected more from these sorts of fears.
And though I do see the PNEB ads around the traps in some publications it still couldn’t hurt for Newspapers to push their green credentials further.
It also does get talked about in environmental circles the amount of mobile phone/old computer/battery etc waste that is filling land-fill and creating ‘toxic time-bombs’ at the moment and many of the phone companies have been taking in old phones in a ‘recycle’ push to address it. So, along with the electricty use print media doesn’t fair so badly in comparison.
It is again another selling point of ‘old tech’ print media that they are a refinable managable environmental cost relative to the real costs of electronic gadgets in their current forms and consumption models – that wont stop ereaders etc tryng to push the environmental angle on paper saving and again is where the publishers need to inform the consumers and not just lurch with the hype of the ‘next best thing’