Stewardship Tip Jan 26th, 2010 – Paperless Magazines
Magazines have a great deal of appeal. Their glossy pages with spectacular photography leap forth and catch our eyes. These characteristics, though, come at a cost. Magazines use a tremendous number of trees to produce that glossy paper.
Read your magazines on-line: Rather than purchasing a magazine, consider reading it on-line. Many organizations and publishers offer a significant amount of content, if not their entire magazine, in HTML or PDF format. Trout Unlimited offers its members the option of receiving Trout in PDF format. Bassmaster magazine articles are archived on the BASS website. Field and Stream and Outdoor Life both offer a significant amount of content on their websites.
Check with the publisher of your favorite magazines. See if they offer their content on-line. Opting to read a magazine on-line can help to reduce the need to harvest trees for paper production.
Why it is important to our fish: In 2008, Discover Magazine estimated that they used 348,000 pounds of paper to produce their magazine each month. Despite respectable numbers, Discover is not in the top 100 for circulation. Assume, just for arguments sake, that it would take about 400,000 pounds of paper for a publisher to produce a magazine that cracks the top 100. If our theoretical magazine used 5% postconsumer content, it would require the harvest of 368,676 trees annually to produce the paper for the magazine(1). That takes a lot of trees out of our forests and removes a lot of detritus from our watersheds.
Detritus, the matter produced by decaying organic substances, such as the leaf from a tree, plays a significant role in our streams, rivers, and lakes. A substantial number of aquatic insects, including mayfly nymphs and caddis larvae, are detritus feeders. Many fish, such as trout and smallmouth bass, thrive on these insects.
Reducing the number of trees near a stream or lake reduces the number of leaves that fall. A reduction in detritus reverberates up the food chain and, ultimately, can reduce the population of fish.
Reading magazines on-line reverberates up the line as well. When we read articles on-line, we reduce the demand for printed magazines; this, in turn, reduces the need to harvest trees for paper production.
(1) Calculated using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator (http://www.papercalculator.org).
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This week’s sponsor-partner:Recycled Fish On-line store
SAFE Angling Kits, available at the Recycled Fish On-line Store, are ready to fish kits loaded with lots of great tackle from FoodSource Lures, Water Gremlin, Dr. Drop, Bullet Weights, Daiichi, Tru-Turn, and
Northland. It comes in a nice Flambeau box and holds all the
tackle you need to go fishing.
Every kit is packed with lead-free
weights, biodegradable molded lures, circle and cam action hooks.
In addition to their partnership to sponsor this week’s Stewardship Tip, we would like to thank them for sponsoring the Recycled Fish 24 Hour Fish a Thon.
Rising demand for our weekly Stewardship Tip and a new partnership with Fly Cast America now makes the Stewardship Tip available in Spanish. Ahora, reciba el Stewardship Tip en español. Gentileza de Fly Cast America.
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