Big steps made by PPA to follow the carbon footprint guest lecture (6)

PPA, the largest organisation for promoting consumer and business magazines urge their members to get green.

With global production of waste on the increase and with a mission to promote, protect and advise. Members of the PPA have decided that its time this statement extended to environmental concerns also.

The magazine business contributes to a vast amount of the unnecessary waste that ends up in landfill sites yearly whether its from magazine packaging, unsold copies, or consumer waste. Nick Mazur, Deputy chief executive for the PPA said, “Environmental responsibility was a chain of events and had to follow many steps to be effective.”

The PPA, which represents over 80% of the magazine industry and currently has 400 publishing members, have untaken extensive research into the best ways to become ‘greener.’

Committee members have put forward recommendations to adopt a degradable poly wrap to cut down on landfill waste as well as increasing recycling possibilities. The suggested wrap is Oxo biodegradable poly wrap and will break down even when emptied into landfill sites.

Further to this, research has been done to explore what other actions can be taken. A successful campaign to increase the amount of waste magazines being recycled into newspapers found that at least 52% were being recycled when tests were carried out on paper mill samples. Nick added “We also literally sent people out to grab samples to see how many magazines were contained amongst waste paper and rubbish.”

The PPA have also looked into the idea of self replenishment for magazine stockists,
“It’s a fact that there’s is at least 30% more magazines produced than is actually needed, having 20 on the stands and ordering more when necessary would make more sense,”said Nick.