What in the world is Women's Adventure doing about the environment?

Women's Adventure and our parent Big Earth Publishing recognize the importance of a healthy planet and lifestyles that preserve, protect and better understand our planet and its varied, interconnected ecosystems. Our staff and our readers thrive and treasure the outdoors. We delight in exploring and enjoying lands both familiar and unfamiliar. We actively seek ways to lessen our impact on the land, sea and air through conscious decisions at home, at play and at our place of business. As custodians of our planet for future generations, like campers leaving a wilderness campsite, we must take the time and make the effort to leave our planet in better condition when we depart than it was when we arrived.

Owing to the nature of publishing, we are selecting more environmentally-friendly printing for our magazines. In the coming months and years, our selection of inks, paper and printers will reflect a growing environmental awareness in the printing industry. Vegetable inks are replacing mineral inks, recycled paper with higher percentages of post-waste content is increasingly available, and printers are taking important steps to reduce waste in their shops and participating in industry environmental awareness organizations. Our selection of printers for the magazine and for our subscriber and marketing materials must reflect this reality.

As a business, our physical office will increasingly include an environmental awareness in our choices of lighting, heating and cooling, office products and practices. Our selection of our office space reflects our growing environmental knowledge, as does our policies of encouraging alternate transportation to and from the office for our employees. Staff members are encouraged to take public transportation, walk, bike or carpool to the office, with free public transportation passes provided to full time employees. In selecting office products, environmentally-friendly products with reduced packaging are increasingly selected. We also encourage recycling of paper, plastic and other products through a vigorous office recycling plan.

Reducing our carbon footprint both as a business and as individuals is important to us. To combat global warming and the growing extremes of weather worldwide, we recognize that everyone must take steps to become more globally-conscious. All of us must reduce our use of carbon fuels and products that lead to an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our planet's atmosphere. As a species, we must adapt to survive, even if our choices are not easy, simple or immediately possible.

The outdoors and the availability of wild spaces and lands are important to us. Women's Adventure is a role-model for our readers and other publishers through our love of the wild and our sensible environmental choices.