TODAY'S TURN: Repaper your office

THE ISSUE:
The office where I work uses more paper than a diarretic elephant. We go go through more ink than Tommy Lee's tattoo guy. If printing and copying were Olympic sports, we'd be getting tested for performance enhancing bull elk testosterone. In other words, we do it a lot.

So I started thinking of ways to use paper less epic-ly.

THE GOOD TURN:
Here are a few ideas (some original, some borrowed, some outright stolen):

• Microsoft Office programs let you print more than one page of a document per sheet. Whether you're keeping a memo paper trail, printing a manual for reference, or producing a best-seller PowerPoint presentation, you can easily get by with selecting 2-4 pages per sheet. Same goes for copies.
• Most web pages keep the interesting stuff up top. When printing from the web, try printing just Page 1 - chances are you'll get what you need.
• Instead of throwing unused papers away, flip them over and stick them back in the paper tray. Or keep them in a special stack for draft paper. 95% of it's eventually going into a file folder somewhere anyway.
• At the very least, use those scraps as note paper and scrap the legal pads.
• Keep a recycle bin right underneath the printer and copier with no trash can in sight.
• Use the WHOLE page. Print on both sides. If you printer doesn't have that feature, I bet your copier still does.
• There's nothing you can fax that you can't e-mail instead.

What's the impact? Right now, about 85% of office paper is tossed. According to this guy, that's a lot of waste just from one typical office. I bet the ideas above could cut that in half.

Got other ideas to save office supplies? Send em to me and I'll add em to the post! kramerms@fuse.net