Campaign strives to cut down on paper usage

Laid end-to-end, the number of pages printed on campus in 2008 could stretch from New York to Los Angeles more than six times over.

Kristin Hanks, a sustainable computing graduate student at University Information Technology Services, is working to reduce this amount.

Hanks said she thought campus printing habits need to change and is launching a “print less, go green” campaign for students to reduce waste from campus printers.

“The campaign is not about limiting students’ rights or access to printing. It’s more about raising awareness and letting people know about alternatives and encouraging responsible printing,” Hanks said.

Last year, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and student organizations combined to print 91 million pieces of paper, which cost IU-Bloomington $580,000.

Only 1.5 percent of those pages were post-consumer recycled paper.

And it’s not just students that need to reduce, Hanks said.

“We’ll be sending out notes to the faculty members to try to encourage them to change some of their practices, because the burden of change doesn’t fall exclusively on the shoulders of the students,” Hanks said.

Between 2006 and 2007, students printed on average 479 pages below the quota, but print totals have been increasing, according to the Sustainable Computing Internship Summary Report, which Hanks wrote.

With the Oncourse drop box, professors across campus can help reduce the number of pages printed. The drop box tool allows students to turn in assignments electronically.

“It prevents the need for more pages to get printed,” Hanks said. “There are a lot of advantages other than the environmental advantages. Any faculty member who’s had to carry around 50 pounds of paper knows that it would be really nice if they weren’t that heavy.”

With Adobe Acrobat Professional – a program included in the Adobe Suite package – highlights, cross-outs and other corrections can be made and saved on the document, so printing is unnecessary.

With 650 pages allotted to undergraduate students each semester, personal printers and their expensive ink cartridges are unnecessary, Hanks said.  

Sophomore Laura Strodtman said she never uses her total allotted paper amount.

“I print off class notes and papers mostly,” Strodtman said.

Campus printing habits have changed from previous years.

Wasted paper was reduced when UITS installed print release stations next to printers in the library. Students must access these stations to make sure the documents they want to print are necessary.

To further reduce paper waste, a chart will appear when students check their print quotas. The chart compares printing habits to those of a typical student.

“Printing double sided decreases the life span of a printer, so there’s a huge debate on that. But in terms of saving paper, that’s an obvious one,” said McKenzie Beverage, IU Energy Challenge coordinator. “It takes a lot of effort to change student behavior just by promoting something, but if you make it easier for them, of course paper will be conserved.”

To encourage students to print less, Hanks proposed taking savings incurred by the student technology center and using it to pay for recycled paper.

“Students pay the technology fee, and part of the technology fee goes to paying for their printing,” Hanks said. Ten percent pays for student printing.