Most of us have a favorite magazine, or even several, that we subscribe to for recreational reading or to keep track of the news or things going on in the business world. When we finish reading them, some of us want to be able to recycle the paper, but many kinds of colored paper are not very suitable for typical recycling programs. Newsprint ? the paper newspapers are made out of ? is much easier to incorporate into environmentally friendly recycling programs.



But you can recycle in a different way, by passing your magazines along to another reader. It works in the same way that hand-me-down clothing works, except that magazines usually are more fun to receive, especially if you pass them along quickly while they are still current. Buy or subscribe to your magazines, keep them for a while and read them, and then pass them on to a neighbor.

One good way to distribute our leftover reading material is to take the magazines and give them to a doctor's office, a fire station, or other places where magazines are welcome. For instance, if you give your magazines to the fire station, then the people who spend long hours there waiting for emergency calls will have plenty of free reading material. Or you can box them up and ship them to a soldier stationed overseas, give them to a college student, or even donate them to a local library or school.

Before giving away you old magazines, it is a good idea to use a marker pen to delete the subscriber info, for security purposes. And be sure to keep your magazines in good shape, rather than using them for coffee cup coasters or other purposes that will mark or stain them. Of course you may come across issues of magazines and decide to keep them, which is fine. Just box the ones you want to give away in one spot, and each month you can take the recycle box to your favorite charity.

The more you give, the better you'll feel, because not only will you be helping the environment by not being wasteful, you'll be turning on other people to entertaining, informative, or otherwise useful and valuable magazines that they might otherwise not be able to read.