Here’s a great idea for all you magazine addicts! Much like the popular book-swapping sites which have sprung up in recent years, MagCycle is a place where you can swap and share magazines.
The idea is to save money and save all those mags from going to landfill, being recycled, or taking up more and more space in your home.
The numbers soon stack up. In the UK, 95 million magazines are printed each month – yes, that’s month not year! And in North America it’s a staggering 360 million magazines. That’s a lot of trees, a lot of chemicals and a lot of CO2 emissions.
Swap and share magazines
By creating a community of magazine readers, MagCycle hopes to reduce the amount of magazines we purchase by swapping them with other readers who share our interests.
That way the magazines are reused rather than recycled, which in itself requires more chemicals to process the pulp, and creates more CO2 emissions. Of course, magazines should never be sent to landfill.
People generally look after their magazines – a glossy mag can cost upwards of £2.00 or £3.00 here in the UK, so passing them on when you’ve read them is a great idea – and MagCycle is the place to do it!
A growing community
To make the system work MagCycle needs readers to register their interests and the magazines they buy. The site has only just launched so those who want to save money and reduce their impact on the environment should sign up to help the community grow.
Have I signed up? Actually, no. The reason; I don’t buy magazines! Here, at Green Pepper, we live by the mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle – which applies to all things, in that order – reduce what we buy, reuse what we can and recycle what we can’t.
That said, I realise many people out there love their magazines (the sales prove it) and, if we can’t persuade you to stop buying them altogether, we hope you’ll join the MagCycle community and share your mags with others to help reduce the amount bought each year.
More information
You can find out more about swapping magazines and register your interest on the MagCycle website. And you can share your views on magazine swapping by leaving a comment below, for others to read.
6 comments… read them below or add yours now
Good idea to recycle mags – or read digital versions here: http://www.zinio.com (via Twitter)
Enjoyed checking out your ecoblog, and “Read it. Swap it. MagCycle it!” is the find of the day! (via Twitter)
Paul, thanks for the great coverage! This is a web exclusive, good on your for picking it up first!
As the founder, I just wanted to invite as many comments and suggestions as possible.
NOTE: We are a non-profit organisation that gives all profits to Children’s Hospitals.
Nick
brilliant! a new home for all my copies of new internationalist, i hope (via Twitter)
Hey, that’s a really cool idea! Swapping stuff is a popular and effective way of saving money and reducing our impact on the planet :)
I like the idea of swapping mags. I try not to buy them often because of the waste and usually swap with them with my mates. MagCycle sounds like a brill idea!