Did You Ever Get Distracted?

Today, I got distracted by, of all things, paper.

We go through day after day, printing, copying, tossing, scribbling, doodling and here in the back country, we even spend time figerin (figuring for you high society types). I printed a document today, double-sided of course, and had to wait about 20 minutes while some report printed on the high-speed copier at the office. Probably a case of paper, 5,000 sheets of paper, I 'figered' (in my head to save paper) that was about 25 lbs of paper.

Here is what got me distracted. What is that costing? Not $, but resources. I found a calculator that told me, but I lost it and then I found it again. Here it is! I didn't validate the results, but used it to conduct a little experiment.

What if we convinced 10,000 folks to switch one case of recycled (100% post consumer waste with virgin paper)? Would that make a difference? (I assumed we would all offset the power with RECs from Wind Energy).

Savings:

• 2400 trees preserved for the future


• 6930.23 lbs water-borne waste not created


• 1,019,460 gal wastewater flow saved


• 112,800 lbs solid waste not generated


• 222,100 lbs net greenhouse gases prevented


• 1,700,000,000 BTUs energy not consumed


• 115,400 lbs air emissions not generated


• 48 barrels crude oil unused

Would it make sense to take one small step? I'll let you decide. Cost compare the products. I'm seeing about $1.50 per ream more for 100% recycled. That's $15.00 more for the paper.

If 10,000 people joined BuyforEarth.com and bought it at TheGreenOffice.com (in the Office Category of the BuyforEarth.com mall) they would each earn 5 points...that is 50,000 points which would buy about 3,333 Renewable Energy Certificates (over 3 million KWh) or Offset another 5,000 tons of carbon (in addition to what using recycled paper reduces).

My thoughts:

You can't beat that with a stick