Top 10 Reasons: We Value the Environment and Show it in Our Business Practices

4. We value the environment and show it in both our design and our business practices. 

Back in 2010, both Julie (our Executive Director) and Sara Stroo (our publishing intern at the time) thoroughly reviewed our firm commitment to environmentally friendlier business practices here at Bitch Media—and what you can do to encourage them (hint: subscribe or donate, rather than buying on the newsstand!).

Honestly, not much has changed since then. We’re still on the newsstand. Middlemen still hold key sales information close to their vests—making it all but impossible to make timely, strategic (environmentally friendly!) distribution choices. Across the board, 65% of magazines from the newsstand still go unsold and are systematically destroyed—wasting the petroleum it takes to print them and get them there—and our precious resources as an independent, nonprofit feminist media organization.

And when you get right down to it, we’re in the ring with major print publications that value sales over the environment and don’t think twice about wasting a majority of what hits the newsstand to sell a small portion of those issues. We reject that mindset and, in fact, over the last two years, we’ve reduced our own magazine waste by 60% (from 12,500 to 5000 wasted copies) and increased sell-through by 39%.

What it boils down to is this: through a solely capitalist lens, our business practices don’t return a maximum profit. But when you incorporate our values—and measure our business practices through a socially and environmentally responsible lens as well—they do.

We hope that you will reinforce our business practices by showing your support with a contribution of $15, $25, $50, or as much as you can, today.