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