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There's something classic about sitting in a caf‚ in a reclined position, with a wide open newspaper stretched over your table. Or relaxing on your couch with the paper creased and folded open on the coffee table. But if you think about every time you've had moments like those, or read over breakfast, or on the train home, etc—you can probably imagine the amount of waste being created. And even if you are ardent about recycling every paper you read, it still stacks up to a pile of energy expenditure and resource usage. So, just read the news online.
Now, reading online shouldn't be too much of a jump by now-newspapers' circulations are declining around the country already largely because of the free online outlets available. The renowned paper the Christian Science Monitor, has just given up its printed circulation entirely, and will now rely solely on its online readership—3 million visitors a month.
There are a few things you can do to support news organizations' bids to trend towards the paperless.
- Register for the site of your news source of choice: Papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post require registration to see their full content. This helps the paper find a more concrete figure regarding their readership size, so they can more effectively market to advertisers. It's like their online subscription base.
- Take the occasional surveys the papers might email to you: It'll only take a second, and it'll provide them with valuable info-you are reading their paper for free after all.
- Subscribe to a premium online service: Papers like the New York Times offer special access to their archives, crossword backlog, and special Times Reader feature if you pay a nominal monthly fee. This is a great way to support your local news source without contributing to paper waste.
- At the very least, click on an ad or two. Just do it for them, even if you have no intention of taking a Caribbean vacation. Online ads count clicks, so support your preferred news source by giving them a little boost.
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