Greening the Berkeley

Science Review

Sebastien Lounis,1 Anna Schneider,2 Anna Goldstein,3 Asako Miyakawa,4

and Chris Smallwood5

1 PhD Student, AS&T; Editor-in-Chief, Berkeley Science Review; 2 PhD Student, Biophysics; Managing Editor, Berkeley Science Review 3 PhD Student, Chemistry; Web Designer, Berkeley Science Review, 4 PhD Student, Neuroscience; Art Director, Berkeley Science Review 5 PhD Student, Physics; Editor, Berkeley Science Review

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.

Recycled Paper

Web Development

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.

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 top-

notch science reporting beyond the

print audience.

Old Platform

New Platform

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.

Issue 22 of the Berkeley

Science Review was printed

using Endeavor Velvet with

30% PCW content and 55%

recycled content.

Issue 23 was printed using

Reincarnation Silk 80# by New

Leaf Paper, a 60% PCW

recycled paper.

Environmental Benefits

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

(Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Paper

Network Paper Calculator v3.2.)

Issue 22

Issue 23