• by Douglas Quenqua , April 15, 2008

When it comes to crimes against the environment, few would place the magazine industry among the worst offenders. But this is 2008, when even the pettiest eco-criminal can score points for engaging in a little rehab - especially if it fits your brand profile.

Hence Backpacker magazine's Carbon Neutral Project goes Discover one better. In an effort to reduce its impact on the environment, the camping and wilderness publication partnered with an "energy auditor" to determine its carbon footprint, a metric encompassing everything from paper consumption to the energy burned by staff commutes.

In its April issue, the magazine offers a full confession - and its path to redemption. Through a combination of paper reductions, digital editions, offset investments and personal sacrifice (staffers pledged to walk or bike 25,000 miles of their commute this year), Backpacker will henceforth be carbon neutral.

Dennis Lewon, Backpacker deputy editor, says the almost 35-year-old magazine made the changes because it understood its readers' passions - perhaps better than they themselves did. "We know that our readers are passionate about the effects of global warming, but [were] not sure they were aware of how magazines impact the environment," he says. "So we decided this is something we needed to be a leader on. It's more a response to what our readers care about than it is about a particular reader demand."