Printing Frugally & Responsibly

All those who simultaneously bless and curse their computer printer please raise your hand.  Yes, me too.  While email, attachments, and pdfs mean less things need to be physically printed, there are still things that need to exist in hard copy. 

Ink is ridiculously expensive.  Some people swear by re-charged/re-filled cartridges, others won't use them.  At the very least, save up your empty cartridges and put them in the recycle bin at your local big-box office supply store for safe disposal. I swear that ink evaporates once you put the cartridge in the printer. 

Here's a small thing - if you believe as I do that small things add up over time.  The choice of font you use affects how much ink you use - I try to use a non-serif font like Arial or Verdana rather than a serif font like Courier or Times New Roman that have all the fancy little footers and squiggles on them.  It is a small thing - but I like to think it conserves ink.  I also pay attention to font sizes - and use the smaller fonts if it helps to make things fit onto a whole page rather than over multiple pages.

If you possibly can - use paper made from post-consumer recycled fibre.  This seems like a Pagan no-brainer - but when standing in the store and faced with the (minimal) price difference, we Frugal Pagans can find it far too easy to take the (slightly) cheaper non-recycled ream of paper.  This, in my opinion, is a false economy. If we don't create a market for recycled paper (and other) goods, then what's the point of faithfully filling up the blue box?

Here's something that is saving me paper, ink, and making me feel better about the times I need to print up copies of rituals, lesson plans, workshops handouts, etc... and for the average home user - it is free

Check out GreenPrint - a free download that monitors your printing, making sure you don't print that last page of an email that just has the Gmail logo in color, and nothing else of value.  It also gives you some tools to promote responsible printing - like a tag for your signature that helps you encourage people to turn "email into treemail".

Try it out and let me know what you think. It saves paper, ink and energy!  

If the Universe wastes nothing, we should follow its example

The Frugal Pagan

*photo images from stock.xchng.com, greenprint logo from printgreener.com