The Philippine Daily Inquirer's recycling advocacy is probably garbage

“Every issue of the Inquirer is already made from 100% recycled paper. But if every reader recycled their (sic) newspapers for one year, we would all save an additional 3.4 million trees, 840 million kilowatthours of energy, and 78
million gallons of oil. Support the PDI NewPaper Drive and help save the environment ...”

The recycling advocacy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer is admirable, but the claim above is mind-boggling and incredible. In what follows I’ll just leave the claim about trees saved to stand.
I did some back-of-the envelop calculations and came out with an estimate of a combined national hardcopy daily newspaper circulation of 6.6 million, assuming the Inquirer assumed its drive would include the recovery of old editions of its rivals. Otherwise, the circulation estimate would be bloated by a factor equal to the reciprocal of its market share. I also estimated that each copy of PDI weighed 200 grams, but even if we grant that that weight is a kilogram, that would still imply a daily circulation of 1.32 million.
(Reliable newspaper circulation numbers are hard to come by because ironically, the principles of transparency and the public’s right to know are not shared by the business and advertising departments of newspapers. The Philippines is one of a few Southeast Asian countries for which newspaper circulation data are missing by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization).
The electricity savings is already about two percent of generation in the whole of Luzon, and at spot prices prevailing in the WESM, would be worth about P4 billion. So, at this point, I will not even question the claim of the volume of oil saved except to say that at prevailing world prices, that would add another P6 billion in putative savings.
The proper way to estimate energy savings from recycling is to subtract energy consumption with recycling from a base case (meaning transporting old newspapers to a landfill and production of newsprint from trees. For the curious and/or technically inclined, try following this reference.
Aggravating the exaggeration of the claims of the Inquirer, and more unforgivably at that, is the assumption that no old newspapers are being recycled. (If it did, the circulation figures above would again be bloated by another factor). In the United States, the rate of newspaper recycling is around 82% and I dare say that in a poorer country such as ours, the rate would be higher. If you don’t know the schedules of your friendly neighborhood ambulant BDP’s (Bote, Diario, Papel) entrepreneurs, you must be living in Forbes or Dasma. My best guess is that the savings from any newspaper recycling drive such as the Inquirer’s would be much less than 10% of the figures cited above. In my case, all newsprint is sold to vendors by the neighborhood diner (the owners of the diner are friends of the Inquirer’s readers’ advocate) I donate newspapers to after breakfast coffee, except for the crumpled ones I use to wipe grease off dishes and kitchen implements, as absorbent for the occasional water intrusions on my bedroom floor after storms, and to clean glass. I can also safely assume that newsprint not ending up recycled would be re-used as wrappers of choice for bulad and tapa in your friendly neighborhood talipapa. In the latter, the Bulletin trumps the Inquirer hands down. I don’t know why. A secret ingredient from the ink supplier?

But 10% of a billion pesos is still a lot, right? But to whom will these savings accrue? Is the waste collection system competitive? Three years ago I worked for a project with a paper manufacturing facility in Luzon and observed so many layers of middle men enroute to supplying the plant with scrap paper, and that’s one of the reasons I’m able to come up with the estimates above. The spouse of my masseuse was in the garbage business in Antipolo and he had to give it up because of the competitiveness of supply going against the monopsony of the buyers.
It may be that the Inquirer drive will benefit impoverished folk targetted as beneficiaries. But it can actually do better. It can radically change its business model and encourage more readership by scrapping its archaic and unenforceable links policy, and thereby reduce the use of newsprint at source. This commentator, for instance, explains resistance to the net forcefully.

And, if you happen to be like me, sentimentally retarded and insisting on reading the news while sipping coffee, find a cost-effective way to access news in cyberspace.
(I’m still trying to muster the heart to tell the old man who has delivered the Inquirer to my doorstep the past 15 years that I have finally discarded old habits).
A final note: Worthy advocacies often lose credibility by the exaggeration of the advocates. This is obviously one of those. To recycle an old economics argument, allow me to say that if it pays for them to do something, reasonable people generally do it. Except if they read Bulletin Today.

P.S. To those interested in my calculations, the spreadsheet file will be mailed on request.