Change the Margins

Soft Toilet Paper is Hard on the Environment

Remember those cute commercials where a little kid would ride a bike, have a sore butt, and stuff his/her pants with soft toilet paper to cushion the ride? Turns out that Americans' affection for cushy toilet paper is a serious offender to old growth forests.

In the The New York Times article "Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft is Rough on Forests," Leslie Kaufman looks at how our toilet paper habits are a pain in the butt (pun intended) for the environment.

Fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.

Greenpeace has come out with a recycled tissue and toilet paper guide, which rates facial tissues, toilet paper, paper towels and paper napkins according to environmental friendliness. Brands Green Forest and 365 are at the top of their list for toilet paper. Click on the widget below for more info.

For paper napkins, I'd recommend going one step further. My husband and I have been using cloth napkins for the past two years instead of paper. It makes us feel fancy and saves a few trees in the process. Something to remember is that even if a product isn't made from old growth trees, the manufacturing process uses energy and creates waste.

A Great Relationship With My Brother

As many of you know, I recently got a new printer. Today I hit the first li'l maintenance check - replacing the toner cartridge. I'm happy to report that Brother makes it super-easy (and free!) to responsibly dispose of your old cartridges. Just go to their website and print out a pre-paid label, box up your old cartridge and pop it in the mail.

According to the verbiage on Brother's site:

Brother currently has a recycling program in place for used Brother branded consumable items. Some of the select components that are returned to us will be remanufactured. Others are broken down so that all of the appropriate metal and plastic components can be recycled.

LifeHacker's Smart and Easy Ways to Reduce Printing Costs

There's a great article on LifeHacker about "Smart and Easy Ways to Reduce Printing Costs." The focus of the piece is on ways to save money, and majority of the suggestions are about ways to reduce print output and ink usage...which just also happens to be good for Mother Earth.

Ok, I just re-read that and it sounded far too hippy-ish...but I'm too exhausted to re-write it. Bottom line: less paper used = less money spent = better for both your wallet and the planet. Suggestions in the article include:
-Print more than one page per sheet
-Use "print preview" and "shrink to fit"
-Only print the selection you need
-Use "draft mode" as the default setting
-Print to PDF instead of paper

There article has a number of illustrations and software recommendations to assist users in accomplishing their suggestions, and the comments section has a wealth of practical tips as readers weigh in with their own experiences. Definitely worth the read!

Refuse the Receipt

As ya'll know, I'm a big fan of changing things one small step at a time. Here's another great grassroots idea from my friend Jeffrey Abramson, who runs the Gen Art Film Festival...

REFUSE THE RECEIPT!!!

"Refuse the Receipt" . . . what an unbelievable amount of paper is wasted and sent to the landfill when stores automatically print out receipts. I'm sure that 99.9% of receipts printed immediately get tossed in the trash. People should have to request receipts (like they should have to request a bag). It's ridiculous that some stores have policies that if they do not just give you a receipt you will get something for free!

So I encourage people to tell store clerks to not print a receipt . . .and if they have to - then refuse to take it - let them watch the receipts pile up in their own trash and maybe they will start to realize what a problem it is!

OpenOffice - .79"

This just in from Nic Duquette, who saw one of the pieces on Margins out this week.

"OpenOffice.org comes with default margins of 0.79" on each side. I believe it's the very distant number-two office suite."

I have not tried OpenOffice.org yet (I've got my hands full dealing with the recent switch I made from PC to Mac!), so I can't advise on how well the software works. But given the software's progressive nature, it sounds like it's definitely worth checking it out for those of you undeclared software peeps.

Suggestions: Courts & IT Departments

Today we sent out our first "friends & family" e-mail blast about the Margins campaign. Even though the perfectionist inside me is screaming, "Wait!!! There's so much more information you need to add to this before it's ready to be seen by anyone but you", I'm trying to override those tendencies. If I waited til I thought it was perfect, there wouldn't be any forests left.

As I type this, 25 people have signed the Microsoft petition so far, and that's ridiculously exciting to me. And that's not just because I'm obsessed with lists! Whether people are signing the petition because they think it's a good idea, or just because they are my friends and feel obliged, Change the Margins is not just an idea rattling around in my head anymore. I'll take obliged...I'll take guilt...I'll take sincerity...I'll take whatever works!

Several people have also emailed me with suggestions about Change the Margins. As I receive tips and recommendations, I'll share them here in the blog. Please also feel free to use the Comments tool to post ideas, feedback, etc. I'd love to know what ideas people like (or don't), thoughts on how to accomplish the goals of the campaign, success stories such as getting your office to adopt different margin settings, potential partners for helping to spread the word, etc.

My father-in-law, a lawyer in Chicago, thought it would be good to target the Courts. According to him, most of them -- especially appellate courts -- have strict requirements about type size and margins in briefs.

Matt from Atlanta suggested the approach of having corporations' IT groups implement the changes. He said, "They'd save a ton of money and position themselves as green."