Alumni Magazines Discover: It’s Not Easy Being Green

At home in Vermont, Pamela C. Fogg hangs her laundry to dry, carpools to work, and composts, even bringing the office compost bucket home in the carpool each week. In the office at Middlebury College, where she works as an art director, she encourages her colleagues at the alumni magazine to print things only when necessary, and when they do, to print double-sided.

Several years ago, Ms. Fogg noticed a disconnect between what she was doing at home and at work. The magazine she was helping produce, like most college magazines at the time, was printing thousands of issues on paper made entirely from new wood, which didn’t jibe with the eco-conscious choices she was making at home. “You can’t just go to work and shut that off,” she said. “I just can’t put that aside when I come into the office.”

Though it was more expensive, Ms. Fogg and Matt Jennings, editor of Middlebury Magazine, switched to printing issues on paper made with 10-percent recycled materials. Now the two are part of a small but growing movement of environmentally conscious editors and designers who are pushing alumni magazines to go green.

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