I woke up on Easter Morning (courtesy of my four son's 6 AM egg hunt) and soon after walked to the mailbox for my newspaper. I get the local paper but on that day I wanted to get a copy of The Boston Globe since there was a story with my input in it scheduled for the Boston Sunday Globe. So, before 7:30 AM, I made my way to the corner store where I found a grumbling newspaper delivery worker assembling the massive sections of the Globe together while I patiently waited for him. He pretended to be speaking to the clerk about how people should be home on Easter Sunday with their families this early but I sensed he was speaking to me since I couldn't help but stand nearby for my paper. People!

Anyway, on the way home I looked at one of the lead stories and it referred to global warming. Right away I thought of who? Yes, Al Gore. My mind soon after started thinking of the newspaper delivery guy.  How many guys like him are out and away from their families on Easter morning to deliver the newspaper? Must be hundreds, no thousands.  I'm pretty sure I was thinking of something like this just before I fell asleep last night. It started coming to me. Something about the hypocrisy of the liberal media. "Hey, The Boston Globe is owned by The New York Times," I thought and then it hit me. Let it hit you now. Here are the results of my research into the Carbon Footprint of the New York Times;

The New York Times delivered 1,086,798 newspapers Monday thru Saturday on average as well as 1,683,855 on Sundays in 2006. That is an annual total of 426,641,436 newspapers.  The NYT also uses some ninety-five trucks including tractor trailers to deliver for the Northeast region from Washington D.C. to Boston Massachusetts where more than another twelve-hundred delivery trucks each brings hundreds of newspapers to yet more delivery trucks, vans and cars to bring the paper to the over 565,000 stores, vending machines, businesses and homes in the region, combining 7,426 vehicles in total every day. Keep in mind, this doesn't account for the rest of the national and international NYT subcontractors. I have yet to obtain those figures but I'm working on it. I was able to learn that in September 2006, the NYT delivered in total to 705,004 homes, 255,768 single papers to other destinations and 181,692 newspaper drop-offs to other destinations. The Sunday Times visits 1,164,149 homes, 416,416 singles to other stops and 103,290 for  drop-offs for multiples. However, if we just focus on the Northeast region which includes all of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, D.C. and Maryland, at an average 28 miles per vehicle each day, the Northeast region NYT delivery vehicles drive approximately 222,780  miles (about the distance to the Moon) every day and multiply that by three hundred and sixty-five days for the year and they drive 81,314,700 miles which is almost the distance to the sun. 81,314,700 miles divided by an estimated sixteen miles per gallon of gas and we can estimate that the Northeast region NYT delivery vehicles burn some  5.08 million gallons of gas to bring newspapers to the doorsteps of the Northeast United States every year. (* I have not included the gas and jet fuel used by the reporters, columnists, sales force and executives who commute and travel for many various NYT business reasons.)

In my quest to guesstimate the Carbon Footprint of the New York Times, I couldn't help but notice that those who buy into this quasi secular cult thing, keep themselves in check with the new environmental penance or Carbon Offsets, by planting trees for their sins against Mother Earth. This is quite interesting in the case of the New York Times since what they essentially deliver is made with (ahem) trees. Lots of them. If 2 NYT newspapers equal one pound (Remember the Sunday Times is in the equation) then the paper uses about 213.3 million pounds of paper each year.

How many trees are used (killed) to manufacture 213.3 million pounds or 106,660 tons of newspapers? Well, according to Markets Initiative, Canada cuts down about 12 million trees to produce 1.1 million metric tons of newspaper. If the NYT has roughly one tenth of that in its 106,660 tons, it is safe to assume some 1,100,000 trees are used to print the New York Times each year less the recycling effort which is known to be a somewhat small fraction and very difficult to track. Now I know The Old Gray Mare just ain't what she used to be but c'mon! They have their own level of elitism. Even Ed Begley's Treehugger.com site doesn't seem to mind. Why should they? The New York Times advertises on their front page. Just try to google the issue, none of these environ-Gorists seem to want to point out the heresy in their 'bible'.

* 1 metric ton= 1.102 ton

Sources:
The New York Times Delivery Department 732-603-4463 

The American Forest And Paper Association

http://afandpa.org/

The United States Department Of Energy
http://www.energy.gov/forresearchers.htm

Publishers Circulation Fulfillment Inc. (NYT Subcontractor)




* Correction made 4/11 regarding delivery destination estimate in the Northeastern region. Tree estimation also adjusted to 1.1M from 4M

* More accurate vehicle & mileage figure corrected 4/13