According to the Hearst Corporation, the average household subscribes to four magazines a year—and that doesn’t even take into consideration all those individual copies you grab when you’re waiting in line at the grocery store behind the lady with three dozen coupons. And after they’re read, what becomes of them?

In my town we can’t even recycle magazines printed on glossy paper, which seems to be most of them.  I do save my gardening magazines, but the Reader’s Digests, runners magazine, and all those women’s magazines I buy because they promise me yet another way to lose my thunder thighs? Residing in a landfill somewhere.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can save the environment and save a child at the same time. There’s a great opportunity to help lower income kids who need to keep reading throughout the summer. An organization called KinderHarvest collects new or gently used magazines and distributes them at places like food banks, homeless shelters, and summer playground programs.

Children’s magazines are their favorites, but the magazine drives take magazines for all subjects and age brackets. Check out all the ways you can help: everything from sponsoring a magazine subscription at a homeless shelter to organizing a magazine drive at your child’s school to dropping off your gently used magazines at one of the New Jersey Starbucks that is participating in a KinderHarvest Magazine Collection.