GreenPrint – One Way to Save Paper
GreenPrint Home Version from PrintGreener.com $35.00 with a 30 day free trial
PrintGreener.com offers software program that can help you significantly reduce your paper usage when printing. The software looks at your document and offers a variety of suggestions on how you might be able to avoid common paper wasting – like printing a page that only has a few lines of text on it. Or a means to easily remove graphics, logos and the like – which also helps to reduce ink use. Treehugger has a review here. Fineprint offers a similar program with many excellent features worth checking out but is a little more costly at 49.95.
However, with just a little more effort most all of these things can be done manually for free, here is a link that offers a comprehensive list of various simple methods people can use to cut down on paper use when you have to print.
You would think that since virtually everyone uses computers these days our paper use would be gradually lessening, sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case. The average office worker prints and copies through some 10,000 pages every year, the average person in the United States uses more than 650 pounds of paper annually. Millions of tons of junk mail every year is immediately thrown away seconds after being removed from our mailboxes. Both consumers and business waste phenomenal amounts of paper that could easily be prevented by taking simple measures such as using GreenPrint or similar measures. Perhaps even better is if more people would forgo printing unless absolutely necessary, then even more paper waste and environmental harm could be prevented.
Some people say that using paper from virgin trees is no big deal because trees are a renewable resource, but tree farming replaces the natural forest habitat resulting in serious environmental consequences. Making paper from trees in general has a steep environmental cost. A vast amount of energy, water and other resources are used in the production of paper. Paper manufacturing is the third largest user of fossil fuels worldwide. Paper that winds up in the landfill not only takes up enormous space but can also eventually break down to release methane gas, an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. One of the best sites about paper and the environment is the Conservatree website which has comprehensive information on these issues.
