Chris Anderson: Paper mags are better on carbon than websites

Posted by David Roberts at 11:41 AM on 05 Mar 2008

Read more about: ecological footprint | websites | climate | carbon sequestration | magazines

From 1998 until 2006, the Wired website and Wired magazine had different owners and were run separately. In 2006, Condé Nast bought the website back and reunited them. I've heard rumors that there were some tensions along the way.

I can't help but wonder if those tensions are behind an odd post from Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, claiming that Wired-the-magazine beats Wired-the-website on a carbon basis.

The claim is mostly based on the fact that by cutting down (sustainably managed) trees and burying them in landfills, paper magazines sequester carbon. There are, however, no numbers offered to back this up. Yet Anderson seems quite defensive about it in comments.

Peculiar.

For story: Chris Anderson: Paper mags are better on carbon than websites
4 Comments | Post a Comment

Paper's biodegradable no?

So what about the methane?

by scatter at 1:42 PM on 05 Mar 2008

Environmentalism for Billionaires

I discussed this absurd argument in a 2007 American Prospect article, Environmentalism for Billionaires.. Among other things, it would destroy incentives for recycling (as well as not accounting for all the inputs).

Call it the Sofa Scheme. They're arguing that every sofa, Post-It note, and Kleenex tissue they produce should be counted as carbon storage, just like forests are. Their logic is that even when these forest products are discarded and put in a landfill, they're keeping that carbon safely in the ground rather than sending it into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.
If the timber lobby gets its way, that could mean big money for the logging companies.

by Glenn Hurowitz at 6:38 AM on 06 Mar 2008

An easy one

This is easy to clarify. Add in all the fossil fueled inputs to making the paper, producing the magazine, and transporting and selling it.

Compare that total to the energy to produce the website and make it available on the internet.

Then realize how much more GHG was emmitted to "store" that carbon in the landfill. Where it isn't stored of course, but instead turned into methane (23 times worse as a GHG than CO 2).

Should a publication about technology and science, on the web or in the mail, be headed up by a technical illiterate like this? Get a new editor-in-chief, Wired.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 7:03 AM on 06 Mar 2008

Also depends on how much magazine is recycled...

...and how much of the magazine's paper is receycled post-consumer content to begin with.

by Tasermons Partner at 8:09 AM on 06 Mar 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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