Some print news companies start thinking about their carbon footprint

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Posted on October 25, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Just a quick additional post today.  A little note of hope, this time from the print media.  Some of the companies that produce the millions of pages of newsprint and magazine paper that are read daily and then discarded are beginning to think about what they are doing — the amount of carbon dioxide it takes to make the paper, get it on the newstand or to your doorstep, and then to recycle the paper afterwards.

It’s a lot, as you can imagine, starting with cutting down forests for the wood, then the energy consumed processing the wood and making the paper.  Much of this processing is done with coal-based energy, the dirtiest and most environmentally destructive of the fossil fuels.

So I found this in the NY Times business section.  Some print media companies are trying to figure out how to reduce the carbon emissions represented in their products, or to even become carbon neutral.  It is an advance that some are even realizing that they need to consider the true costs of paper, which include emissions and other environmental impacts.  If they can move quickly to carbon neutrality, that would be a witness to other industries.

This is good news, hopeful news.  We need more of this.  And we need something else that some corporations are asking for — clear rules, mandates, regulations from the federal government and from international climate treaties.

Consumers can play a huge role here by demanding that the companies with which they do business, from which they buy consumer goods, the ones who receive their money, are moving quickly in this direction.

Comments

One Response to “Some print news companies start thinking about their carbon footprint”

  1. Don Carli on October 27th, 2006 6:53 pm

    Dear Margaret:

    I’m delighted to hear that you see the article and hopefully the sustainable advertising project that ISC has undertaken with help of John Hardy as a source of hope.

    ISC believe that the advertising, publishing and printing industries can both raise awareness about climate change and also address sustainability in the way in which it manages the lifecycle of energy, water, fiber and other resources.

    ISC welcomes advertisers, publishers, printers, paper companies and other stakeholders to join ISCs alliance for sustainable advertising.

    Together we will identify, quantify, offset and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with advertising, publishing and printing and take action to address climate change and address the challenges and opportunities of sustainability.

    Best regards,

    Don Carli
    Senior Research Fellow
    The Instiute for Sustainable Communication
    http://www.sustaincom.org
    212-922-9899 phone
    dcarli@sustaincom.org

    (ISC is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization)

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