We’re sticking with the theme of paper for this week’s “Change the World Wednesday” Challenge.

Living with a tree lover daughter, it’s great that my awareness is bought back to our paper consumption from time to time. I used to use a lot of kitchen towel, but now I use about one roll every six months. Every piece of paper is reused for scribbling shopping lists on the back of and we’ve added our name to all the ‘opt out’ lists for junk mail.

Last week we all unsubbed from unnecessary catalogues for our challenge. In the UK, this amounts to an astonishing 1500 items per year!

This week, we’re asked to look at other things we read such as magazines, newspapers and books. We’ve been asked for one week not to purchase a newspaper, magazine or book, but rather swap with someone or find our news online.

Well apart from one magazine subscription per year, which comes out every 2 months and is my treat to myself, I don’t tend to buy anything. Newspapers are passed on to us second hand from our neighbour the day after she has read it. Breaking news is read on the internet and I love our library for books!

Although we have a small village library with limited stock, I can order anything in from the county. Once a month or more, we travel to a bigger library within the county where the choices are huge. In fact this week I just received “The Good Granny Cookbook” from our library, which is a collection of recipes from post war England. I’m fascinated by the resourcefulness of housewives across the country, who could make a meal out of one egg and 1/2 a potato!

No doubt they knew how to get the most out of an old newspaper too!

It would seem the publishing industry create a LOT of waste. According to one ex editorial assistant, over 40% of books printed are pulped.
Charity shops seem more and more attractive, don’t they?

What about you - could you go without your favourite daily newspaper or glossy magazine for a week. How about switching to an online magazine subscription to save paper and ink?

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