Greening the Berkeley Science Review 1 Lounis,
Sebastien Anna 5 and Chris Smallwood
2 Schneider,
1
PhD Student, AS&T; Editor-in-Chief, Berkeley Science Review; 3 PhD Student, Chemistry; Web Designer, Berkeley Science Review, 5 PhD Student, Physics; Editor, Berkeley Science Review
Asako
4 Miyakawa,
2
PhD Student, Biophysics; Managing Editor, Berkeley Science Review 4 PhD Student, Neuroscience; Art Director, Berkeley Science Review
Web Development
Project Goals For the past 11 years, the Berkeley Science review (BSR) has brought UC Berkeley’s most compelling, controversial, and quirky scientific innovations to the campus community and beyond. Written and produced on a volunteer basis entirely by students, the magazine has won numerous awards for its content and design including being named the 2008 Best Publication by the UC Berkeley Publication Awards. In the fall of 2012, we were awarded a TGIF grant to adopt a series of measures to print on more ecologically friendly paper, and to improve the web-based platform. Specific goals included: • Shifting the printing of our issues to 55% recycled paper • Converting the website to HTML format. • Organizing a sustainability workshop to share what we learned with other campus publications.
In past years, BSR articles were only available online by scrolling through PDFs of the entire issue. These documents were slow to browse and difficult to read on a digital screen. Displaying individual articles for HTML viewing is critical to growing our online readership, as web browsing becomes faster and more interactive. With this goal in mind, we hired an undergraduate intern to import the past four issues using a IssueM, a Wordpress plugin that simplifies issue-based web publishing.
Old Platform
We have created a standard issue homepage, where readers can browse the title, subtitles, and author of all the articles in a particular issue. This page also has a featured rotator image where we can use photos and graphics to highlight our feature articles. When the reader clicks on an article, they see a sidebar that connects them to the rest of that issue's articles. This system will enhance the reader's experience and increase the impact of BSR’s topnotch science reporting beyond the print audience.
Recycled Paper In the course of implementing recycled paper in the Berkeley Science Review’s newest issues, we learned that not all recycled paper is the same. A valuable metric for recycled paper is its “post-consumer waste” (PCW) content. In particular, PCW is a better metric than “recycled content” because the former is made from paper that has been put in recycling bins by consumers like us, while the latter also includes paper scraps that are recycled internally within a paper mill.
Anna
3 Goldstein,
New Platform Issue 22
Environmental Benefits
Issue 22 of the Berkeley Science Review was printed using Endeavor Velvet with 30% PCW content and 55% recycled content.
By using 1375 pounds of 60% PCW paper, we conserved the following resources: • 1 ton (7 trees of wood) • 3535 gallons of water • 4 million BTUs of net energy • 276 pounds of solid waste • 791 pounds of greenhouse gases
Issue 23 was printed using Reincarnation Silk 80# by New Leaf Paper, a 60% PCW recycled paper.
Issue 23
(Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator v3.2.)