Earlier this year, town officials in Castle Rock, Colorado - population 35,745, location 35 miles south of Denver - were charged with reducing paper consumption 10% within 6 months by the town council. Not only did they meet the goal, they exceeded it. In fact, they nearly doubled the reduction to almost 20%. Castle Rock Utilities Director Ron Redd explained how the goal was exceeded:
He said staff volunteers formed the Paper Reduction Committee and started documenting how much paper the Town uses in a year as well as researching ways other towns across the U.S. have reduced paper use. What the committee found was surprising. One of the heaviest uses of paper was found to be the weekly Town Council agenda packets. On average, 29 copies of the agenda packet, each containing roughly 250 pages, were being printed each week. By switching to electronic copies of the packet for Town Council and reducing the number of packets printed to five, the committee was able to accomplish the 10 percent goal.
One of the ways they achieved the other 10% was two-sided printing and copying; as well as some more subtle changes. For example, changing margins from the Microsoft Word default of 1.25" to .75" will cut longer documents up to 80% and substituting an 11-point type for 12-point type saves even more paper. Such little changes do so much!