August 1, 2004

Computers are wonderful. They make it possible for the Spokesman Review (The only daily newspaper in Spokane, Washington) to allow me to select the "Investments Section," to be included in my newspaper once a week. If I did not want it and would not read it, they wisely don’t want to waste the paper and production to include it in my newspaper.

This morning, August 1st, 2004 I picked up my copy of the Sunday Spokesman Review and brought it in to read during a leisurely Sunday morning breakfast. My usual routine is to separate the paper into two stacks... those stacks that I plan to read and another stack of advertising inserts that I immediately dump into the recycling bin. This morning I decided out of curiosity to weigh both stacks.

The newspaper stack weighed 1 lb. 6 oz. The advertising insert stack weighed 2 lbs. 6 oz. If I were to do this every Sunday, and assuming that the paper stack weights were the same each week, that would be 123-1/2 lbs. of paper that I would immediately dump into the recycling bin each year.

I know that the weekday circulation of the Spokesman Review is a little more than 100,000 copies. More papers are produced and sold for Sunday, but if we assume that the Sunday circulation is also 100,000 copies, the math tells me that there would be 118 tons of advertising inserts delivered with the Sunday Review.

The Review has already shown that they can selectively customize the contents of the daily paper to meet my request for the investments section to be included once a week. Why could they not also at my request, customize my Sunday paper to NOT include any advertising inserts? I think that they can.

This would be a win, win plan for all parties involved. I would not be dumping them into the recycling bin. The advertisers would not be paying for readership that they are not getting. The Review would greatly reduce the cost of producing and delivering this unwanted and unread advertising. Plus, eliminating the need for possibly thousands of tons of paper would save enormous amounts of trees, energy and fresh water.

Come on you environmental zealots out there... lets put the pressure on the Spokesman Review to do the right thing and we will all be the winners. WDM