“OMG, what is that thing, it’s absolutely hideous,” noted someone as she passed by me walking up the stairs.
Well, I’m pretty sure most people have seen it and don’t even notice it now. That “thing” hanging from the staircase and as the student so eloquently described is part of Net Impact’s educational campaign to discourage unnecessary printing and challenge the Owen community to reduce paper consumption. The Smart Printing Sculpture as we should call in going forward was made from a couple weeks of wasted paper here at Owen. Darcy Lincoln and Mark Winterer are credited with the innovative design and message of the mural.
In 2008, Owen used approximately 4 M sheets of paper. According to papercalculator.org, this amount of paper requires 56,000 lbs of wood, 156,602 gallons of wastewater, and 18,227 lbs of solid waste. Let’s not forget to mention all the ink, energy, and effort required to print the paper. It’s hard to grasp the true weight of these numbers, but considering the fact that this amount was generated by a community of only 600 people puts a perspective on national paper consumption and its impact. Paper consumption is further magnified at the end of its cycle as over 1/3 of US landfills are paper products.
Net Impact believes that Owen can reduce its excessive paper consumption by using the Smart Printing practices listed below. If we can reduce our paper consumption, we can spend the saved money toward buying paper with a higher recycled content, thereby further enhancing Net Impact’s efforts. We can also prove to the school that we don’t abuse our free printing privileges, which no one else at Vanderbilt has, and is in danger of being taken away; VU’s paper consumption was reduced in half when they started charging students 4 cents per page.
So who really cares anyhow? I guess we should all care since some initiatives might be introduced at Owen requiring students to pay for their print jobs. Instead, let’s just exercise some smart printing practices and save that money to get the zip-line that Dean Lehman wants to install from his office to the Kegs area. I’m sure he’ll let us zip down a few times.
Smart Printing Practices
1. Print double-sided: Default your computer to print double sided.
Steps
· Double click the printer
· Select Printer | Properties from the menu
· Click the “Printing Preferences” button on the General tab
· Go to the Finish tab
· Check “Print on both sides”
Or… when printing
· “Print”
· Go to “Properties”
· Select “Finishing” tab
· Check “Print on both sides”
2. Print multiple slides on one piece of paper.
· In the print dialog box, choose “Handouts” from the “Print what” drop-down, and then choose the number of “slides per page” you want.
3. Use print preview before you print and don’t print with inverse colors, this causes the printer to overheat and jam.
4. Print only the necessary pages in a document instead of the whole thing.
5. Minimize the number of drafts you print.
6. Reuse paper that has only been printed on one side.
7. Use electronic versions of documents whenever possible.
8. Use “Shrink to Fit” – an option in print preview dialog boxes, which will shrink content down to fit on fewer pages.
9. Ask professors to provide their own printed slides to avoid jamming student printers right before class. Also, copiers use less ink and energy than printers!
"THAT THING.."