One of the side parts of my job is that I get crazy amounts of car magazines at the office that come from all avenues. I used to try to keep and archive/library but there are too many titles these days and we rarely used them when I did. None of them do we pay for and some we get multiple copies of per month. I thought it was a cool aspect of the job when I started but it is mainly a burden now as there is no time to read really any of then and my best hope is to flip through about half of them. Everything from truck mags, drag and oval race stuff, yo-Yo boyz ricer mags with more mostly naked Asian and Puerto Rican girls, weeklies, monthlies, etc. to the stuff I like (Grassroots Motorsports, SportsCar, AutoWeek, etc.).

I have to do a major purge every two to three months because it gets overwhelming and they overflow the shelf onto the floor. Today I tossed out probably 150+ mags and they were only from June and July 04. I feel bad not only that this much info is getting tossed but that I am putting this much waste paper in the garbage landfill as there is too much to shred for packing material and no way to burn it.

Anyone have any ideas of something beneficial to do with these things? All I can think of is to try to find a VA hospital or something and take them a load. Maybe they could use the reading material in waiting rooms or for patients. I though about offering them to the local firestation if they have guys sitting around killing time but I am afraid that I could probably easily overwhelm them. There must be something more productive then filling dumpsters and mailing them somewhere would be really expensive.

 

You got a used bookstore in your area? We have a couple of big ones that take magazines as long as they are from the past 3 months or so (no back issues).

Or give them out to customers? Just leave a pile by the door with a sign that says "help yourself."

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by travis &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">You got a used bookstore in your area? We have a couple of big ones that take magazines as long as they are from the past 3 months or so (no back issues).

Or give them out to customers? Just leave a pile by the door with a sign that says "help yourself."</TD></TR></TABLE>

Hadn't thought of the used bookstore thing but it might not be kosher to sell a mag that we got for free, regardless of who gets the money (technically I couldn't take it and the company wouldn't want to deal with it). Since we don't sell anything on site, we don't get customers really that come in to visit and generally it is salemen who we don't really want to have hang around. My daily mail could choke a doctor's office sometimes.

If anyone here is near Cincinnati/Northern KY and wants a wide variety of free, recent car mags, please step forward.

 

In that case, a better bet might be to find a local charity that can make use of them. You might even be able to work out a way for them to pick them up every month or two so you didn't have to go out of your way. Hey...free girlies!

 

I think local car guys, hospitals or charities would probably be the best. If I could get address labels off them, even donating them to the local jail might not be bad but I don't think I'd want to have our address on them to invite trouble.

 

libraries ??

If you were good about keeping them organized somewhere. You could just keep them for a whole year, then put it on ebay. considering most mag's sell backissues for alot of money (40 plus bux) it might be worth the effort.

if you are gona toss them, at least try and find a recycling place. Im in cali, and its obviously a very pro green earth ****. we have 1-3 locations in each county to drop off newspaper, wood, mixed paper, etc...

with my work we have alot of vendor brochures. kinda the same boat as you, as in we get stuff that we dont even ask for.

I usually make a couple trips to the recycle center each month to drop off old and busted brochures

 

If you have any of those IndyCar magazines from the makers of RACER and SportsCar, I'll take them off your hands, I could always use more toilet paper.

 

Library
Local Youth Group
Reading program (teach kids/adults to read using interesting stuff)
Local auto shop class
Sell them then give the money to a charity
Give them away (http://www.freecycle.org/)(find a local freecycle site)

With as many as you get you can give to several places. Just put the word out and ideas will be presented to you.


At least recycle them. many schools collect paper and get money for it (maybe thats just local to St. Louis).

Fastest way to get the address lables off is to just cut them out. It leaves a hole but no big deal.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Bob-DC2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">if you are gona toss them, at least try and find a recycling place. </TD></TR></TABLE>

In Oregon you can just toss them into the recycle bin with your glass, cans, etc and the disposal company recycles them for you.

Most offices have paper recycling with someone that picks up... find out who pics it up for you guys and see if they do magazine recycling as well.

 

I would try a local school. I had a similar problem where I used to get too many magazines. Luckely my girlfriend is a teacher and every so often she would take a pile to her school. The kids have to read quietly for 20mins every day and they really enjoyed having the car magazines to look at versus the typical school reading materials. They don't even care if they are a month or even a year old. One word of caution, don't send over the mags with all the naked girlies, schools really frown on that type of material.

Erik

 

We really don't have much around here in the way of recycling programs. This is Kentucky so the only paper we recycle is toilet paper

There is no chance I could keep these for more than about three months or I would be totally overrun. In the next month or two before the next purge, I'll see if I can find a charitable group or hospital that might want them. I like the school idea but some of the ricer/girlie mags might be a bit more than teachers would eant kids to see. Thanks for the input.

 

I think the best suggestion so far was to donate them to the local high school auto shop. At $4 per magizine you could save those kids a lot of money, plus help future generations of car nuts like ourselves.

 

I like the idea of hospitals and jails/prisons. Just take off the address labels.

But if you have any magazines on F1, Champ Cars, or IndyCars, I'll take them. I'll pay for shipping or send you a CD of my trip to Mid-Ohio.

 

Head down to the local high school and open up your trunk.

 

Last time I checked you guys used some sort of brown paper for shipping stuff. Stop paying for that and use magazine pages.

 

Here is an idea worth considering Lee-the VA and similar centers have library facilities. Our Veterans deserve current material.

 

My thoughts too... It would seem to be perfect material for our military. We just need to figure out how to get it from you to them without much cost. Is there a military installation nearby? National Guard?