Another in a series of posts dedicated to making conscious decisions for living a better life.
Since finishing school Peter and I have found that we rarely need to print from our computers. Maybe for craft projects or directions from Google, but not the multi page papers we once printed. It is easy to say, “put scrap paper in!” before we printed something, but much harder to do it. It was often that we forgot and would print something inconsequential on a beautiful, white, clean piece of paper. What a waste!
To solve this problem we’ve taken all the new paper out of the printer and replaced it with ‘scrap’ that has printing only on one side. Now when we print something it automatically goes on the recycled paper. If we’re printing something nice we remember to put clean paper in.
It is such a simple, free, earth friendly solution…I’m sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.
That’s a REALLY good idea! Art and I just bought a shredder for all of the junk mail we get because we’re working on trying to recycle it instead of tossing, but the non-sensitive stuff could definitely be used for printing!
We shred the confidential stuff (then put it in the compost!), reuse the one sided paper and some envelopes (in the printer, for lists, etc) and save the rest in a paper bag. On Sunday ‘the rest’ gets dropped in the Abitibi dumpster behind church (Dane St Congregational). They make money based on the amount of paper received.
we shred junk mail and statements and use them to start fires in the woodstove. a nice handful of that makes perfect kindling.
i love the recycling behind the church thing… excellent.