I do not know how well you keep up with your professional reading, but if truth be told, I gave up years ago.
Every day, my small desk is washed by tidal waves of paper and journals that even the speediest reader could never hope to wade through, especially after a long day with patients.
Dr. Larry Greenbaum
In my training days, I used to blithely toss old journals into the wastebasket across the house-staff lounge when my locker got too full. I used to call this “the 20-foot journal toss,” giving the menial chore a jaunty Olympian sound. Back in those dark ages, recycling bins were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are now and throwing out unwanted paper was the norm. But the practice of tossing expensive, landfill-glutting journals into the garbage has become untenable. I now have a green recycling bag strategically located in the small gap between my desk and the bookcase, and when the piles become high enough to teeter, I quietly transfer the almost-pristine journals into the bag.
I know what you’re thinking: There are doctors in Third World countries who would love to have my discarded journals. I’ve checked this out. Numerous organizations help provide such resources to developing countries, but what they really want is a donation of money, not the journals themselves. And no one in my state seems to be interested in hauling away my piles of journals, even if they’re free for the taking.
Recycling presents another, more subtle issue. Perhaps bystanders would stop off at the local dumpster with their piles of newspapers, see my glossy journals in there, and think, “Gee, what kind of doctor throws away journals? They look as if they haven’t even been read.” Even if I had been careful to remove my name, I fretted that some local sleuth would track me down and publicly shame me.
For a long while, I was stuck. I could no longer bring myself to jam the journals into the wastebasket, I couldn’t give them away, and even recycling wasn’t completely free of risk. I looked in the local recycling dumpster this morning and saw a pediatric journal that some other doc must have thrown out. It was heartening to know that someone else had gotten over the journal-recycling inhibition – or perhaps never had it in the first place.
My current solution is less bold and a bit sneakier: I transport the journals and the household recycling up to the dumpster at the same time, putting the journals in first and then throwing all the bags of newspapers on top of them. You would actually have to climb into the dumpster and root around to discover my discarded journals. That’s not commonly done in my neighborhood.
I’m not suggesting that you crawl around in the dumpster, although I did have that experience once. My wife likes to store supplies in paper sacks in our garage. The problem is that our garage is full of bags that all look more or less the same. One morning, I was gleefully hauling the last sack over from the car when a new box of tissues on top of the dumpster debris caught my attention. “Who recycled that? How careless and dumb,” I thought to myself. As my eyes scanned the dumpster’s contents, I saw more boxes of tissues, a new package of computer CD-ROMs, a new calculator, a package of pens, and a fresh set of glue sticks. It dawned on me that in my zeal, I had grabbed a bag of new school supplies that my wife had stored in the garage. No matter how much I jumped up and down in protest of my own stupidity, I’d need 10-foot arms to reach all the supplies that were now in the far recesses of the bin. I had to drive home and fetch a stepladder. As I perched on the dumpster’s rim, I prayed that none of my neighbors would take my photo or steal the ladder. Now I’m more circumspect when I load the recycling bags into the back seat of the car.
Most medical journals are available online. Having a pile of journals sitting on my desk is messy, but at least the pile goads me into a little bit of reading. A virtual journal sitting in my e-mail inbox is not going to have that beneficial effect.
Furthermore, I can’t imagine that anyone would subscribe to the notion that the virtual journal and the hard copy should have the same price tag. Let’s save trees and the environment too, but at least give me a discount to encourage the nobler choice. Until that great day arrives, however, I doubt you will be able to see the pretend-wood veneer of my beleaguered desk.