I just read a fascinating study from The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment that aimed to quantify the carbon footprint of the printing and distribution of National Geographic magazine. The author admits at the outset that:

Currently, there is no international standard for conducting a product life cycle carbon footprint.

But:

Both the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the World Resources Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol are working to develop standards. The study followed the ISO standards for life cycle assessment (ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006). The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard also provided guidance.

The entire study is worth reading, but to cut to the chase:

The study showed that the life cycle of the National Geographic magazine produces about 0.82 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents per life cycle of the average magazine. The amount of GHG emissions per life cycle of each magazine produced is about the same amount of GHG emissions produced by driving an automobile (8.5 km/liter gasoline) for about 3 km.

Or, if your chosen metric is non-Metric, that’s 1.86 miles. Not unexpectedly, paper manufacture and printing account for the bulk of that. But unexpectedly, the use of recycled paper (5% and 10% recycled paper content) had an “insignificant” impact on the overall carbon footprint. However, caveat lector:

Total GWP [global warming potential] results have an estimated uncertainty of plus or minus 25%. This means that it is likely that other LCI [life cycle inventory] practitioners, using the same data sources to do the same study, would find that the life cycle of the National Geographic magazine produces between 0.6 and 1.0 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents per magazine.

It’s easy to be skeptical about these kinds of studies, especially as there is no formal methodology, but I think they’re useful for getting a “ballpark figure” of environmental impact, even if that ballpark can be pretty large, amorphous, and ill-defined. Let’s face it, all human activities have some kind of environmental impact, but if we’re serious about carbon neutrality, it’s important to know how we can do our best to offset the impact of the things we might like or find useful and informative—such as reading magazines. For example, I hate driving, but love National Geographic magazine, so I would gladly forgo driving 1.86 miles to read it. In fact, let me know if you want to read a copy and I’ll walk an extra 1.86 miles for you. I could use the exercise. An interesting idea for a future study would be to attempt to gauge the carbon footprint of the electronic version (Web site, e-mail news updates, Twitter feeds, iPad/iPhone apps, etc.) of the same basic magazine content. Obviously, without paper and printing, it would be lower...or would it? There are all those servers, desktops, laptops, electricity use to power all these things, handheld devices, batteries, the list goes on. I’d be curious to see that quantified in some fashion (and it may have been somewhere), because it would be easy to see how someone could take the statement “The amount of GHG emissions per life cycle of each magazine produced is about the same amount of GHG emissions produced by driving an automobile for about 3 km” and say “OMG, we need to stop printing magazines!”—despite the fact that many people think nothing of driving 1.86 miles. And, in fact, in some parts of the country, you have to drive that far just to get to your mailbox...to pick up your copy of National Geographic magazine, which only compounds the problem. See how complicated these things can get? If you get a chance to , I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.