How to Use Less Paper

The paper industry is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. The average American uses over 700 pounds a paper a year, and most of it ends up in landfills. While recycling paper is a step in the right direction, there is much that each individual can do to reduce the total amount of paper that is used.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Pay your bills on-line. Any organization that sends you a bill is likely to have an on-line payment option. Safe and convenient, on-line payments to banks, credit card companies, utilities, cable and phone companies save trees and money. Envelopes and stamps are rendered unnecessary and time and money are saved. You also will always have an easily accessible record of your transactions.
2. Use email instead of paper or faxes whenever you can. Don't print any but the most necessary emails. Add the words "please consider the environment before printing this message" to the emails you send. In addition to saving paper, less ink will be used for printing and ink can be very costly.
3. If you must print or make photocopies, be sure to do it using both sides of each piece of paper. Most printers and copiers will allow you to select "one-sided" or "two sided" from the print menu. If your printer won't allow you to print on both sides of a page you can outsmart it by first printing the odd pages and then flipping them over and returning them to the printer to then print the even pages. You will end up with a collated double sided copy.
4. If you are a reader, it is time to "think outside the box" and use both the old and the new to save paper. Old-use your library. Rather than buy and then need to store a book, why not just borrow it from the library and return it when you are through? As for the new, consider e books. Amazon's new Kindle holds the equivalent of 200 hundred books at one time and each book is delivered instantly as soon as you order it. You don't even need to be near a computer because the book is delivered over the same 3G network as advanced cell phones.
5. Replace paper towels, paper guest towels and dinner napkins with cloth ones. The cloths can be washed with your regular laundry. You will save money and paper.
6. When printing envelopes, use your word processing program to print the address directly onto the envelope. Using labels for addresses and return addresses is redundant and wasteful.

Tips & Warnings

• Reuse all paper that has only been used on one side. Recycle all other paper.