Just got this memo in my inbox from Time Inc.’s corporate leader, Ann Moore:
I want to share the details surrounding our newest sustainability initiative. ReMix (which stands for Recycling Magazines is Excellent) is a national public education campaign aimed at increasing residential recycling of magazines and catalogs. The campaign was created four years ago after a study by Time Inc. and Verso Paper showed that only 17% of magazines from the home were being recycled. The results revealed a huge opportunity to increase awareness for residential recycling. We partnered with the National Recycling Coalition, Verso Paper and Time Warner Cable to pilot the ReMix campaign in cities including Boston, Portland, Milwaukee and the DC Metro area. All four pilots were met with success.
I suffer from eco-anxiety thanks in part to working for a business that puts out 3.75 million copies of about 80 pages of stapled dead tree every week. Let’s see. That’s about 15 billion pages a year. Holy guacamole. That’s a lot of landfill.
So this is a welcome initiative. What I want to know is: what the heck took so long? And where’s the part where we print our magazines on recycled toilet paper or, better yet, go all digital? How about ordering some of our 3,000 employees to telecommute? That would a) relieve New York City of some pollution and congestion, b) save millions in office-upkeep costs, and c) generate much-needed revenue by freeing up our Rockefeller Center skyscraper for rental to the likes of Lehman Brothers.
Maybe I should write the next memo. I’d call it Truly Excellent Initiatives to Save Planet Earth and Also Magazines in General, or Teispeamg. Not as catchy, maybe, but I’m keeping it real.