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Today’s post is by executive editor Doug O’Neill.
I had an epiphany not long ago, and it goes something like this: “It’s a right pain in the back when you DON’T go green.” Just as global warming weighs heavily upon my brow each morning as I read the newspapers on the subway ride to work, I’ve become equally aware of the burden of excess paper weighing heavily upon my lower back as I schlep extra kilograms of paper products and documents in my briefcase and crammed into my backpack as I traipse about the city.
Take one recent Thursday, for instance. Not only did I have to bring back to work a pile of manuscripts that I had taken home the night before but I was also loaded up with mountains of handouts for the students in my journalism class at Ryerson. Ouch, my lower-back issues flared up something fierce. And that got me thinking: how do I lighten my load? The answer is simple: print on double-sides. Excellent. That actually (A) lightened my load but also, and more importantly on the global scale, (B) reduced my paper usage by half. A no-brainer. So that got me thinking: How else can I cut down on paper use at home and at work?
Here’s what I’ve come up with:
1. Letters to my kinfolk. Yes, I still have relatives who exist without email. No more will I use six pages when I can use three double-sided.
2. Need extra paper for jotting down rough notes during meetings? Why not reach into your blue box and grab a bundle of clean (coffee-stain-free) print-outs and use the clean side?
3. Notes to my cleaning lady. Alice and I have got into the habit of swapping notes. Mine read like, “Alice, could you attend to the dust balls under the bed?” Her reply: “Mr. Doug, I need a shovel to clean your bedroom. What would your mama think?” These exchanges used to play themselves out over clean sheets of lined paper. Now, however, I use the backs of envelopes, the backs of shopping lists, the backs of junk mail flyers.
4. Why print it at all? Adding a gentle, “Only print this document if absolutely necessary” to each and every report you email to staff will save you tons of money and paper.
5. The Paperless Office is something we can all strive for – even if we don’t get there. For instance, you receive a 12-page update on a project but you’re only interested in pages 6 and 7. So just print those two pages and take a pass on the rest.
6. Reuse paper in your printer. If you’ve printed on one side and the reverse is clean – use it again as fresh stock.
7. A recent invitation to a house-warming ate up two pages, one for the map, one for the directions plus phone number. Solution: use both sides of ONE sheet of paper. (And to think that 50-plus people received that invite. Hmmm, so 50 unnecessary sheets of paper were used.)
8. The kids need colouring and painting paper at home: Simple, each Friday as you leave the office, reach into the recycling bin and grab a buncle of used paper with info printed on one side only. Fax spam is good fodder for this. (Just make sure there are no company secrets printed on the one side.)
9. All those extra promotional sheets that come stuffed into your charge card and utility bills? Cut them and half and you’ve got an instant supply of sheets for shopping lists and note-pad paper for use in the home.
10. Agenda for your next community group meeting? Email it. Avoid printing it on several sheets of paper distributed to 20 people unless absolutely necessary.
11. One copy suits all. If you do need a paper copy of an agenda for a meeting or brainstorming session, why does everyone have to have his or her own copy? Let them read it in an paper-free format, such as email, and then bring JUST ONE copy to the meeting.
With a little forethought you could save a whole lot of paper – and a lot of wear and tear on your back.
How do you reduce your paper use?
Today’s code word: paper
At my house we do all the things Doug does and have been for years. At my place of employment however, they don’t seem to care at all. Any ideas on getting a company to step up?
Comment by Jen Harder — March 29, 2008 @ 11:52 am
Thank You so much for all your informative information on going green. I run my own in home Daycare so afew years back I decided to see if going green could make a deference in the costs of doing child care. I put out a request to parents to help out and received a pleasant surprize. Not only did I used cards which we recycled into beautiful art.Surplus paper from different offices where the parents worked, used to create individual Picuso’s. Various empty plastic containers which we made into bird feeders.
I couldn’t believe how much I saved by not having to go out and purchase craft materials and the children loved see what they could create. I am a true believer that reusing can make not only a difference in your pocket book but in the lives of little children.
Look forward to learn more from your Green Blog
Karen Smith
Regina,SK
Comment by Karen Smith — March 29, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
I think what’s already been said shows that it’s actually very easy to re-use paper, especialy at home. However, as Jen says, getting a company to come up to the plate with reducing virgin papaer is very difficult. At my work we have to print off multi-page “booklets” which only get partly used. As a result, we are left with piles and piles of one-side printed paper which cannot be given away. Now I could dismantle the booklets, select specific pages to re-print, and re-assemble them, but the company will not pay me for my time to do this, and the amount of paper we use means that I could spend about five hours per week on this surpisingly complicated task. So the best we can do is recyle- we shred the paper, then take it home to go out in the domestic rubbish. Which simply puts pressure on another part of the recycling system. I have even brought the paper sheets home intending to cover the grass in the back yard with them when preparing a new flower border.( I didn’t do it early enough this year, unfortunately.)However, both these measures are simply stop-gaps, really- they are not sustainable on a year-round basis. And we cannot give the paper away to daycare places or elementary schools, either- they are “sensitive” papers. I don’t know if a pet store would take the shredded stuff. I do know that you shouldn’t use it for worm composting.
There isn’t really any way that we could print off one copy of the booklet, put it in a plastic sleeve and just share it around- it simply wouldn’t work. So stalemeate on that one, too.
At present, at work, we already do do most of the things that Kat suggested. But it’s still the tip of the iceberg, and we are far away from being paperless.
Some other thoughts on ‘reducing’ paper:
1) Being suburban, the amount of flyers and advertising we get in the mailbox can be cut down simply by refusing to accept the flyers. Most flyers are avaiable on-line, anyway. Even CT gas coupons are on-line.
2)Using pencil and paper instead of typing, whenever possible. For typing, you have a large sheet of paper for a small note. Pen/pencils require much smaller sheets of paper, usually. And recycled paper envelopes are usually sufficient.
3)Have one or two days per week when the printer “doesn’t work”,or the photocopier “has no toner” and see what you can do without it. Rather like Earth Hour, it generates a necessity which powers the invention gene.
3)Perhaps handouts and papers, such as in Kat’s class can be presented on-line, in blog format or by e-mail. Then istead of worrying about reducing paper, you can agonize about wasting power!
And everyone_is_using recycled copy paper, aren’t they? It’s a tad more expensive, but just as good.
Comment by Caroline — March 29, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
Jen, you’re right, it’s tough to get a workplace to commit. But I think it can be done, especially if you angle it to the higher-ups as good PR for the business.
Caroline, thanks for the tips. I do buy recycled paper for my home printer and keep a stash of once-used sheets so I can print on the back of them when I need to.
And that’s another idea if you have a printer with two trays - designate one the blank paper tray and one the re-use tray.
Comment by Kat — March 31, 2008 @ 10:15 am
Besides reducing our use of paper, which, by the way, is the most important and least emphasized of the three “R”s, is cheaper than recycling and reusing, both of which require more transport and processing. It also saves hundreds of thousands of trees per day needed to produce newsprint and paper products–a heavy drain on forests, which affect habitats and the environment.
It would be nice to see the magazine publishing people required to use 100% recycled paper and vegetable inks.
Comment by Yvonne — April 1, 2008 @ 2:34 pm