Marion Guyer Sends Publishers a Rejection Letter

Dr. Guyer shows off some of the wasteful mail she receives.

Marion Guyer, MD, a hospital-based specialist at the Oakland Medical Center, recently gave more than a dozen magazine publishers a taste of their own medicine. She sent them a rejection letter.

Dr. Guyer receives as many as 15 unsolicited medical journals every month in her mailbox on the 13th floor of the Oakland Medical Center. So do 30 or so of her colleagues in the Internal Medicine Department—all the same magazines, all unsolicited, all a big waste.

Dr. Guyer wrote letters to each publisher requesting that just one copy of their magazine be sent each month to the department, and she had about 20 of her colleagues who were working in the hospital that week sign the letters.

A pile of magazines that clutter a table at the hospital.

An MBA student in sustainable management at the Presidio School of Management, Dr. Guyer figures she will take at least 3,000 magazines out of circulation with this one simple act, and she will prevent the release of roughly 6,000 pounds of toxic greenhouse emissions from polluting the air. (A study by Discover magazine shows one little publication produces 2 pounds of carbon dioxide during its lifecycle.)

She and her colleagues are doing what they can to reduce, reuse, and recycle—the three R's of waste management. "But there is also reject," she said, explaining that it is important for companies and individuals to decide up front to reject wasteful products.

Dr. Guyer is generating interest in the hospital's green team, and her colleagues are eager to help.

Eric Lipsitt, MD, an internal medicine doctor in Oakland, said there are a lot of people at the medical center—physicians, nurses, physical therapists, etc.,—who are committed to "greening the campus," but health regulations and other factors can make recycling and conservation complicated. "It’s terrific she is trying to pull things together," he said. "She has great ambitions."

The latest might give one well-known drug maker a headache. When Tylenol sent the physicians in Dr. Guyer's office each a box of 100 individually wrapped tablets, buried in bubble wrap and shipped in an oversized box twice the size of a shoebox, she promptly asked the hospital's pharmacist drug education coordinator, Gillian Epstein, to tell the drug company to stop these unsolicited mailings. "It's unbelievable. Everyone in the office got it," Dr. Guyer said. Not only is it against Kaiser Permanente's policy to receive sample drugs, but everything about the mailing was wasteful, she said. "It's totally unnecessary."