India: Traditions of Recyling Magazines

MPA had just unveiled a public education campaign to let readers know that magazines can and should be recycled. Member magazines can display 'Please Recycle' and public service advertisements in their magazines to reinforce the message that magazines are recyclable.

In India, we have been reusing our newspapers and magazines for years. Once a month ‘Raddi wala’ (waste-paper pickup man) comes home and picks up the old magazines, newspapers and even bottles and pays me by the kilo (different prices for newspaper and magazines).

These he then sells. The old newspapers go to paperbag making outfits and the old magazine show up in numerous 'Second hand bookstores' or are farmed to waiting rooms of various outfits. In fact, in Mumbai, the Turner Road magazine man used to have an amazing collection of old international magazines (some which were sold with their masthead cropped off)

In many restaurants in Goa it is not unusual to find the latest copy of 'The New Yorker', 'Eve', 'Der Spiegel' and many other fascinating magazines, left behind by tourists and maybe even traded by ‘raddi walas’ and picked up by restaurants to make the waiting for food bearable for customers.

My son's school cuts up old magazines to make craftpaper for children. A shopkeeper in my neighborhood collects old newspapers to hand them over to the prison or the nearby 'home for the mentally challenged' where inmates turn them to paperbags. The International Animal Rescue in Goa accepts old newspapers to line animal cages. An artist friend cuts up colourful ads for making collages. And I often turn to my old collection of old magazines for inspiration and ideas.

What do you do with old magazines?

Here are two interesting links to help you in resuing your old magazines:
1) What to do with old magazines?

2) Five ways to reuse old magazines

And finally two unusual way of using old magazines:
Making Magazine Bowls

Making Paper Beads