Last year, Colgate reduced its campus-wide use of paper by nearly four million sheets of paper or by one-third of our total in 2009. This was accomplished through duplex printing, print release stations in our public print areas, and many individual efforts such as the Grants Office.
The Grants Office recently started a new practice to cut down on the use of paper. Typically, an average of 42 grants are processed each year. For each grant, a hard copy was distributed to the department, division, dean of faculty, and the project director/principal investigator; approximately 30 doubled-sided sheets of paper were used per document. Approximately 5,400 sheets of paper were used per year to process grant proposals. A small amount of additional paper was used for distribution of award letters.
Now, the Grants Office is distributing these proposals as PDFs, thereby saving nearly 11 reams of paper per year! Congratulations to the Grants Office for doing their part to advance sustainability at Colgate.
Paper is one of the most wasted item and this needs to be stopped because more trees are getting cut just to be able to manufacture this product. As other communities encourage recycling and shredding Austin events (as an example), others also try to educate users on how to be practical and not waste paper and other kinds of products.
If possible, try to go paperless especially if it is not necessary to make copies of office documents which can be sent via email. Thanks for the info!