Environmental Leader

The entire lifecycle of every copy of Discover Magazine produced costs 2.1 pounds in Co2 emissions, the magazine reports.

Here’s the math:

• Discover’s staff puts out 5.4 tons of carbon dioxide on travel each month.
• Office energy use adds another 8.7 tons of CO2.
• Shipping the 348,000 pounds of paper needed every month emits 13.7 tons of CO2.
• Harvesting and transporting the trees to the mill adds 22 tons. The 8 tons of 50-percent-recycled magazine inserts adds 20 tons.
• At the printing plant, producing one month’s edition of the magazine adds 52 tons of CO2 .
• Ink adds 9.6 tons of CO2.
• The 540-mile journey from the printing plant to a distribution facility outside Chicago adds 4.7 tons of CO2.
• From Chicago to other distribution centers and on to postal facilities around the country adds 10.6 tons.
• The trip to local post offices and reader mailboxes accounts for another 16 tons of CO2.
• For newsstand copies, the trucking footprint to each state and Canadian province adds an additional 5.8 tons of CO2.
• Traffic from wholesalers to retailers – and the trip back for unsold issues -adds 2.3 tons of CO2.
• Add 176 tons of CO2 for recycling and landfilling.

The total comes to 962 tons of CO2 for somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million monthly copies. This month, Discover says it will purchase a carbon offset for $4,796 from Carbonfund.org.

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