Vanity Fair Recycles Convoluted Celebrity Cover, Not Paper

Vanity Fair’s third annual Green Issue is currently on newsstands. You’ve probably noticed the cover—Madonna bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders—which is almost as ridiculous as last year’s. Almost. Anyway, our complaint isn’t with the cover. No, it’s not about the Material Girl per se; it’s about the material of the magazine. For the third year in a row, Vanity Fair’s Green Issue was not printed on recycled paper. We appreciate the fact that such a massively-distributed, mainstream magazine even does an environmentally-themed issue. But when you consider that none of Condé Nast’s publications are printed on recycled paper, and that the singer on the cover of this one has a larger carbon footprint than some cities (offset shmoffset), the gesture feels pretty hollow. Are we overreacting? Or does this seem like the summit of hypocrisy to you as well?