New 'green' mag hits Philly streets

As of this week there's a new place to find info about sustainability in Philadelphia.

Grid Magazine, a free monthly, is available in nearly 200 locations around town (an E2P hat tip to Michele Tranquilli for alerting us to it). If you're around South Street, you can find it at the Whole Foods there. Other locations will be posted at the mag's Web site, where you can also page your way through the current issue.

Grid is mainly the brainchild of Alex Mulcahy, formerly more focused on publishing music magazines with his company Red Flag Media. But sustainability "is a topic I've become very interested in over the last couple years," he said, "and I thought the market was right for something like this."

With an initial print run of 15,000 working its way through town to various distribution points (often via bicycle), Grid already looks like a solid, professional product and covers many aspects of environmentalism in and around Philadelphia. Experts such as Director of Sustainability (and fellow Green channel writer) Mark Alan Hughes and Farm to City's Bob Pierson weigh in with their own columns and Q&As providing credible authority. Topics throughout range from our solar future to book and restaurant reviews to local developments in biogas technology.

With each issue organized loosely around a theme (this one is The Energy Issue), Mulcahy says you'll continue to see some variation in offerings from month to month. For instance, there's a plan for a monthly feature promoting local and plant-based foods that are in season ("we can't keep having hoagies for lunch and burgers for dinner" and hope to reverse global warming, Mulcahy notes) as well as profiles of local individuals who are doing the often unsung work of "greening" Philadelphia. And it should go without saying that Grid is printed on 100% recycled paper - but it's still nice and glossy.

Philly residents can subscribe for a fee and get the magazine delivered. Even if you don't go that far, though, watch for Grid around town. Earth to Philly welcomes this new publication to the "chorus of voices," as Mulcahy puts it, that are getting the word out about the many ways we can work towards a sustainable Philadelphia.