Minimize printed documents at meetings.
Welcome to Week 14 of the 50 Ways to Reduce Your Waste Line. Last week, we asked you to consider using reusable cloth or scrap rags instead of paper towels. This week, we look at ways to reduce your footprint as the meeting organizer.
One Thing You Can Do
As presenter or meeting organizer, plan ahead to provide soft copies of notes, leaflets, or slides. Some people will have a natural inclination to print and bring any documents they receive beforehand (agenda, past minutes, reference documents, etc.) so they feel prepared. Expressly inform your meeting participants that printed documents are not required (or desired!) and that you will have electronic copies to display via data projectors in the room. There are also many cloud-based file sharing possibilities (Dropbox, Google Drive, shared drive on the Sheridan network, are just a few options) to let people view documents, as well as edit and/or collaborate on them during or after your meeting. Avoid distributing printed copies of presentations or meeting content (especially slides which, because they are graphic, tend to be very toner-intensive). And when you send them afterwards, make a point to ask your attendees to save them as files and not print them. Perhaps even refer them to the fact sources in this or other 50 Ways tips to support your request.
Some Facts
As noted in the September 25th “50 Ways” tip, and the accompanying facts about paper recycling, conservation (remember, the first of the 3 Rs stands for Reduce) always trumps recycling, much in the same way it is better to use less electricity than “green” electricity. Recycling will help you feel less guilty about paper waste, and it does help more than doing nothing. But the better option is to not introduce physical items—in this case paper documents—into the world unless they have a necessary and enduring function.
This fact sheet about paper and paper waste should help motivate you! Read all three pages, or take note of just one fact: “Paper and paper products account for more than 1/3 of all Canada’s waste” and ask yourself if you want to be part of that statistic. You have the power to choose not to bring resource-intensive products (paper, chemicals, packaging, etc.) into the world, and to reduce *your* carbon footprint in the process.
Log in to Sheridan’s Papercut account via Access Sheridan (under Software Installation in Sheridan Resources) to see the breakdown of resources consumed by your print jobs. Good chance it will be less of a tree, but much more carbon, than you think.
