I just opened up my October issue, and the bag says #4 Recyclable. I don’t remember that being on there last month…although it may have been. I just posted about it at my blog: GreenUPChallenge.com:

Here is the specific link:
http://greenupchallenge.blogspot.com/2008/09/challenge-22-revisit-old-assumptions.html

I wonder if people were stealing the maps?

You know- this jhas bothered me for a long time that Nat Geo and other mags I get all of a sudden come wrapped in plastic. I even cancelled my subscriptons to many mags because of it. I personally think it is to protect the advertising and subscription inserts added to mags. And like Jennconspiracy said “I remember when National Geographic came with a paper band wrapped around it. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t now.” And I like that it was said in one of the letters that all of the catalogs we recieve doesn’t have plastic wrapping.

The joke used to be that National Geographic, with its pictures of topless tribeswomen, should come in a plain brown wrapper. This would be much better than a plastic bag!

One way to protest, I guess, is to buy the Harvard Lampoon’s parody of the magazine, which is available at newsstands, not, as far as I know, wrapped in plastic. In college, I was never that impressed with the Lampoon magazine (so often sophomoric – literally! I preferred the MIT equivalent, but then, a friend of mine helped write it), but some of their special issues, and their parodies of well-known publications, were pretty good.

It drives me nuts when I see all the newspapers lying in people’s driveways and yard in plastic bags on days when there is no chance of rain. But then, they have to keep the sections of the paper together as deliverers throw them. From cars. If we had kids working paper routes, placing newspapers gently on stoops…

Oh, here‘s something from NPR on degradable bags for newspapers! But it seems to miss the point about what “degradability” means, and to support recycling at supermarkets as a viable alternative. Get a clue, NPR folks!

Thanks for another great post! I wrote letters to ‘Real Simple’ and ‘Reader’s Digest’ about this same issue and both times received unsatisfactory responses… Thanks for sharing your letter, it’s great to copy, paste and tweak a little bit to send to other companies that are also practicing this same bad habit! :)

Looks like most grocery bags (only 1% of them get recycled) are recycled into the fake lumber products.

Funny to see this post today…I just sent letters yesterday to Whole Foods for wrapping their organic bananas in plastic(!?) and excessive use of plastic for other items as well (dried cherries, for example) and I cancelled my Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic (all part of the same company) credit cards because Old Navy had a mailing in which they mailed me an empty plastic bag to bring to the store and get 20% off what I can fit in there. Seriously? I think writing letters definitely does help.

I’ll write a letter – I remember when National Geographic came with a paper band wrapped around it. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t now.

In fact, I would like to see the maps printed on paper with a higher recycled content.

I was just baffled by the response that “polyethylene wrappers are not unlike grocery bags in that they are recyclable if there is a local drop-off”

Isn’t that type of drop-off for RE-USE — not recycling. I never have had the impression that any plastic bag drop off site at a grocery store was for anything other than re-use by other grocery store customers.

Am I wrong in this impression?

Great point. As much as I try to reduce my waste, I’ve never really thought much about that plastic wrapper on the NG every month. I’m going to go write my letter right now.

i hate plastic too. when me and my dad peter go to price chopper we never even get paper or plastic. my little brother derrick wears a back pack and we put everything in it. it is nice to save the world.

What make it even in worse is that most magazines come wrapped in plastic in a bundle to the local post office. I think it goes by route number, the extra 4 digits after a zip code. 12345-XXXX.

So they are wrapped twice.

I just wrote my letter. It really irks me when things are needlessly wrapped in plastic. It can be so disheartening, but this is my therapy! Thanks FPF!