From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

When we at TIME registered our environmental concern by naming the endangered earth as Planet of the Year for 1988, we began to look in our own backyard. Last year the Time Inc. Magazine Co. set up the Magazine Environment Task Force to seek out more environment-friendly ways to produce more than 1 billion copies of 25 publications that the company prints annually.

As part of that effort, a six-member action group established at TIME promptly dubbed itself the Green Team and began teaching fellow employees how to separate their trash for recycling. More than eight tons of high-grade ^ white paper are now recovered every month from our headquarters building in New York City. About 11,000 bottles and cans -- each redeemable for 5 cents -- are collected for We Can, a nonprofit organization that aids the city's homeless. "This is a serious program," says Green Team leader Laura Conboy, TIME's opeations manager. "It is going to be part of how we work here forever."

Beginning this summer, all office paper used in the building, including stationery, memo pads and business cards, will be recycled paper. On the broader front, the company-wide task force is encouraging our suppliers to develop lightweight, recycled coated paper for use in our magazines. The paper available so far is too heavy, and its use would increase our total consumption of paper. In fact, we and several other Time Inc. magazines recently switched to a lighter paper. Reports task-force chairman David Refkin, who is assistant director of paper purchasing: "In the case of TIME alone, this saves more than 2,500 tons every year."

We have managed to reduce the number of spoiled or unusable copies that come off the presses, another savings of several thousand tons. Some magazines are being recycled to make newsprint and other grades of paper; we are also exploring ways to enable readers to recycle more magazines at the local level. In addition, we are experimenting with inks based on soybeans rather than oil.

Even those subscriber-reply cards that are included with your magazine every week are getting fresh attention. From now on at least half of them (or 150 million a year) will be printed on recycled paper.