Discover Magazine Maps Carbon Footprint

April 21, 2008

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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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