Day Three - Monthly angst

There was an interesting article on msn.com today about “frugalists” and “freegans”—people who get most of their food from dumpsters, and most of their possessions second-hand. Here’s the link if you want to check it out:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24879628/

Meanwhile, I got three magazines in the mail today (we’ll talk about the Scourge of the Catalogs tomorrow). According to an article by Jon Swartz at USA Today online, an estimated 12 billion magazine issues are printed each year in the U.S. Wow.

My own stack of unread magazines has now reached the two-foot mark. I just don’t have the time. Usually, I keep them for a while and then end up throwing many of them away lightly perused, or even completely unread. I subscribe to three magazines and get one with a professional membership, so 12 issues per year X 4 means I’m putting 48 magazines in the recycling bin or the trash each year.

My husband subscribes to no less than 8 - two of which are weekly instead of monthly. That’s another 176 per year. Together, we get 224 magazines per year, not counting the ones we pick up at the supermarket or bookstore. Or the kids’ comic books, or my oldest daughter’s new obsession with pre-teen gossip magazines. (The Jonas Brothers have been generating a lot of paper waste, lately.)

We’re going to sit down and seriously consider which ones we could do without. (In my case, probably all of them!)

We also get the daily paper. I’d like to say it’s thoroughly read, but let’s face it. There’s the front page and the sports section, and everything in between is pretty much cat box liner.

Having a journalistic background, I am loathe to get down on print publishing, which has suffered many blows over the last 10 years. But the reality is that the environment can’t support this kind of waste.

One option might be to change to an online format for magazines. Check out zinio.com, where you can purchase online subscriptions to your favorite magazines—Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, Business Week, Organic Gardening, plus about 750 more. You can pay for a yearly subscription or by the issue just as you would a paper publication. Plus, many people are hard at work to make these volumes available on mobile devices in the near future, so portability could be right around the corner.

Some of the comments attached to the USA Today article said this service was great. However, others claimed they received a lot of spam from it. So I’d do some research before subscribing. Other sites suggested were Texterity.com. and Nxtbook.com.

If anyone has any experience with online magazine subscriptions, please let us know the advantages and disadvantages.

Tip for Day Three: Find a friend to exchange magazines with, and cut your subscriptions in half.