How do you repurpose old magazines?

Question

I just read an article on how the one magazine I subscribe to is printed and was amazed at how many MILES of paper is used each month (about 1,590 miles, and it's a magazine I doubt you've heard of). I'm not the type of person who recycles very much, I can even say that recycling doesn't even make my top 25 list of things I need to focus on, which makes this question all the more shocking to me. I'm wondering, how can we repurpose, and reuse our old magazines? Is there anywhere we can donate them (other than the recycling center)? I know many people like to keep their past issues, I do too, however after a while I do throw them out. Now I'm beginning to wonder how many miles of magazines get thrown away and what I can do about it. Are there any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you have curb side trash pick-up, you can put them in your recycle bin to be recycled.  You can also take them to recycling centers.

Answer 2

Check your public library to see if they take donations.  Our library takes books and magazines.  You just put them in a bin at the counter and they have receipts if you want a tax deduction.  All my old magazines go there.

Answer 3

I read that too :-)

I usually  keep nice pictures for lessons and just put the rest in the recycling bin. I am all about recycling stuff.

Answer 4

You could bring them into work and put them in the break room.  We have a magazine rack here full of old magazines, and people are free to steal them if they want.

I've seen people take the pictures out of the magazines and make collages with them.  I've also seen people surface cheap unfinished tables with magazine pages and polyurethane to make a cheap one of a kind piece of furniture.

Answer 5

one lady i know cuts the pictures out and puts them in photo albums for the nursing homes on our area.the people love looking at the pictures and don't realize that they are from magazines

Answer 6

I'd sell them on ebay.....

Answer 7

Teachers can use old magazines for lesson plans with their students from grades K-12.  The pictures are grea for making a collage and the articles are useful for reading fluency and comprehension lessons not to mention gaining more insight in terms of the content of the material.

Answer 8

I take the colorful pages and make paper beads.  My grandmother taught me how to do it years ago.

Answer 9

When I was moving, our RS Pres gave me trouble for keeping all my back issues of Mother Earth News and Popular Photography.  (Okay, the MEN is my husband's!)  She suggested that I take the stories and articles I really liked out and put them in a binder for future reference.

Another fun thing that I have seen done with magazines was a quiet book that the YW in my branch made for my children.  They took from The Ensign and Friend pictures of Jesus and Nephi and sacrament and everything they could and put them in little books for the kids to look at during Sacrament Meeting, hoping that it would help the kids be more reverent.  Collages and stuff are fun things to do with pictures from magazines.

Answer 10

I work at a hospital and we have a certain selection of magazines that we order. Those magazines get put into red binders so that they aren't taken home. We have a number of patients that, when they are finished with magazines they themselves order, bring them in to see if we want them for our waiting rooms. We take them and usually leave them outside of a binder so that patients in the waiting room are free to take them. That way it might be read my several people in a waiting room and then eventually taken home by someone who really wants it for something.