While the fine print inside the second page of each Vanguard edition reveals that the newspaper is printed on “40 percent post-consumer recycled paper,” we just don’t think that is quite enough.
So the Vanguard is going to flex its proverbial sustainability muscle even more by providing five fun, innovative and somewhat useless ways to reuse this respectable publication.
1. Dartboard
With a few folds and contortions, a copy of the Vanguard can be converted into a dartboard, where readers fling their favorite metal darts at the masthead (the part on page two with all the staff names) in an effort to hit the staffer who has caused them the most ire.
A couple favorite targets: Owen R. Smith and Jason Chastain.
2. Breakup tissue
You want to dump your girlfriend, but there’s one problem: You don’t have a tissue handy. In an effort not to be deemed insensitive and keep the prospect of “being friends” open, pick up a Vanguard on your way to the dump site. This way she can read the campus news while crying her eyes out.
3. Monkey-cage mat
It is common to hear that a disrespected daily rag—newspaper speak for a shoddy paper—can double as a liner for a birdcage. You know, that way bird can relieve itself onto something worth less than its own feces.
For whatever reason, the Vanguard doesn’t work for birds. They freeze up and can’t bring themselves to letting it go on its journalistic masterpieces. But, equally as strange, 9.4 in 10 helper monkeys prefer the Vanguard to such publications as the Portland Tribune and even The Oregonian.
One monkey, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, called the Vanguard, “just right.”
4. New pants
Eco-fashion is a phenomenon that has inundated Portland possibly quicker than the Blazers shift back into public favor in recent years. There is now an annual eco-friendly fashion show and it is all the rage.
Our publication didn’t want to miss out, so its editors have created a line of Vanguard-specific clothing made entirely of newsprint. Items include—but are not limited to—socks, underwear, ties, faded-denim-frayed-ripped-cutoff jeans and even tuxedos.
5. Vanguard TP
Newsprint is a far cry from quilted, four-ply toilet paper, but one of the greatest uses for the Vanguard outside its normal edifying role is to clean those intimate, private areas of the body.
You can admit it to us. The Vanguard is your No. 1 backup TP option.