Paper, Paper Everywhere
Greentips: September 2010
Despite the explosion of online communication, paper is far from obsolete: according to industry estimates, Americans still use more than 90 million tons of paper products annually. Recycling paper helps reduce landfill waste and deforestation (which contributes to global warming), but the best thing you can do is to use less paper in general.
Here are some easy ways to save paper throughout the course of your day:
* Switch to online billing with banks, mortgage lenders, utilities, and other companies that regularly send you statements in the mail. If every U.S. household made the switch we would save more than 750 million pounds of paper and 9 million trees—avoiding nearly 10 million tons of global warming emissions—each year. You’ll save money on postage as well.
* Say no to receipts. U.S. banks alone print 8 billion ATM receipts each year. In addition to excess paper consumption, these receipts are printed on coated “thermal” paper that cannot be recycled.
* Get used to reading from a screen. Online subscriptions and “e-readers” from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony can make a dent in the 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers U.S. publishers print annually. If you prefer the experience of the printed page, visit your local library; many offer online reservations and will notify you when titles become available.
* Eliminate junk mail by contacting the offending companies directly or opting out of national and regional mailing lists (see the Related Resources for specific instructions).
* Make electronic copies of documents you need to save or share by converting them to PDF (portable document format) files. Free PDF-making software is available online, or you can purchase a combination printer/scanner that creates PDFs.
* Adjust print settings to use as much of the available space on your paper as possible. For example, copy emails, webpages, and text from PDFs into a word-processing program, which allows you to reduce margins and font size, and delete unwanted images or text. Print on both sides of your paper, and consider squeezing two or more pages onto each side (if you don’t need to read the fine print). Use 100 percent post-consumer-waste recycled paper when you do print.
