Save paper - Save the environment!

Saving paper at the office - we all can do a small bit for the environment, believe me - it is not all that difficult... It just take a conscious effort, saving paper at the office is not like quitting smoking or drinking, and you can do it without much effort too!!!

Right now I do not write as a preacher, I write here with a message and a few tips and ask you to look into your inner self when you press Command P or Control P for the printing that document, do you really need it?

Here are a few tips which might help you in saving some paper sheets the next time you print:

1. Do you really need to print? Just think it over, is printing really required? Often the answer may be "no".
2. Use that extra margin, by default most softwares set a very wide margin, often it is 1.5 inches, often you do not need to have such wide margins, by editing the margins you can get more on a sheet of paper thereby saving paper - also as you are getting more in a sheet of paper, it is easier to read as one wouldn't have to flip pages.
3. 12 point or 11 point? I will ask you a question - in the picture, which block is more readable? The one on the left is a text block of 12 point, the right one is 11 point, often for reading there isn't much difference - but the difference lies in the lines per page you can accommodate - saving more paper.
4. Use "Print Preview", this is especially useful when you are printing off web-pages, due to their formatting, they end up taking many more sheets of paper when printing, with the "useful print" only on a few sheets. Do a print preview, and see how many pages are useful and which ones aren't, then while giving the print command, instead of all pages - print only the ones you need.
5. Print PDF rather than paper, often if you want to print documents for later reference, printing them out as PDf is also a great idea - these are in the digital format, can be easily carried around in flash drives or mailed to yourself, you can get numerous free pdf writers, also on Mac OS X, it is there by default!
6. Print both sides of the paper, these days many printers are duplex which means they can print on both sides of the paper automatically rather than you having to manually flip the pages printed, simply see the advanced printing settings to set the "Print both sides option".

Often it happens that we do need to print a document - don't feel guilty, print it out! If you read this blog and if it had an impact on you or simply provoked a thought - you're excused, don't lose sleep over it...

But keep this in your mind... Save Paper!