Welcome to Green Boot Camp, a 52-week program to help fine-tune or change your habits so that you can live a greener life. As I’d posted a few days ago, each week during Green Boot Camp I’m going to be focusing on a different “green” habit. Why one habit a week? I figure that if we take it slowly and consistently, I’m confident that you will be successful in adopting a more eco-friendly lifestyle without feeling like you’d worked hard at it.
I’m lucky. My green lifestyle started when I was a kid and I began accompanying my mother to her volunteer gig at a local recycling plant. To me this wasn’t work; it was fun.
While there I loved tearing the covers off of magazines and the labels off of mayonnaise jars. Then we’d toss them onto two conveyors belt tongues that fed into separate recycling machine mouths. I was almost giddy as I heard this monster smashing the glass and chewing through paper.
None of my friends quite understood what I did on the weekends with my mother.
“What’s a recycling plant?” I remember them asking me. “Is it for your garden?”
As a kid, if I wanted to get rid of a piece of paper, I was only allowed to do so once I’d used every inch of it for writing down phone messages or math problems I needed to solve for homework.
I still refuse to get rid of paper unless it’s been used on both sides, and as a magazine writer and book author, I get a lot of paper mailed to me—in the form of press kits. I will disassemble these kits and “harvest” clean paper that I can reuse in my printer.
Speaking of which, for the first week, we’re going to focus on improving our paper recycling habits. Today, though, we’re going to talk a bit about how you can reuse paper first before you toss it in the recycling bin.
These days nearly every home has a computer and a printer, meaning that you are probably going through a lot of paper yourself. And if you’ve got kids, you’ve got lots of paper. If they aren’t printing out tons of stuff, like the latest Webkinz they hope to get from Santa, they’re likely bringing home piles of paper from school. This means that without even realizing it, you have a lot of paper that you can reuse before you recycle it.
So the next time your printer is running low on paper, set your timer for five minutes and go on a paper hunt throughout your house. See how many sheets of paper you can find that are printed on one side only and which you can use in your printer. Who cares if it’s colored paper, if you’re just going to be printing out a draft of something. This way you won’t have to use brand-new paper at your first printing.
If you find paper that’s dog-eared and will jam the printer, then turn it into a scratch pad for phone messages, homework help or shopping lists.
As far as shopping lists go, if you’d like to kill two birds with one paper stone, take all of those envelopes that come in the unsolicited credit card offers we all received nearly daily in the mail and begin to use them for writing your shopping list. The benefit of reusing these envelopes is that you can slip your coupons inside the envelope and have your list all in one place
Let me know some of the surprising places you’ve found paper to reuse in your printer.
7 Comments
December 18, 2007 at 6:14 pm
For my shopping list, I use the back of the grocery bills (if the back is white and empty).
For the other sheet that I don’t use for the printer, I cut them in 4 pieces and make holes at the top to bind them together. Or I cut them in 2 and bind them on the side to make bigger notepads for anyone interested in the office (instead of buying new notebooks). I even re-use cardboard pieces at the back of those notepads to make it easier to take notes.
December 18, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Leah: I’d written an essay (as yt unpublished) on this very subject, called “Pushing the Envelope.” So glad you’re encouraging others to use envelopes for lists as well.
I also use them to file receipts for my freelance writing business (they’re labeled “postage,” “office supplies,” “phone,” etc. — I’m very low-tech).
Because I’m a university student, I get a lot of waste paper in the form of reading lists, syllabi, the previous quarter’s quizzes, etc. The other sides of these get reused for letters and also for doing the prep work for my Spanish class (we don’t turn it in).
Last year I’d found a three-hole punch for 50 cents in the remainder bin at Staples; I punch holes in a stack of this scrap paper so I can put the prep work pages in my notebook.
Any junk mail that has a blank side gets cut into small pieces and stacked in a little bin (rummage sale, 10 cents) by the phone.
I’m sure there are other uses. In fact, this topic is on my to-do list for the Smart Spending blog that I write for MSN Money. (http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending) I’ll definitely link to this article that you’ve written.
December 18, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Donna:
I love the clearance bin at Staples and other office-supply stores. Where else can you get protractors for pennies? (We recently stocked up for next year’s back to school!) Please let me know when your “Pushing the Envelope” piece is published and/or if you’d like to interview me for any green-related “smart spending” stories you might be doing. I’m so glad that you stopped by and posted a comment!
December 18, 2007 at 10:15 pm
I bring the empty junk mail envelopes to school with me. My students use them for lunch money, field trip permission slips, book orders, and more.
December 19, 2007 at 5:07 am
I’ve used the backs of envelopes for years to write lists, take notes etc. I learnt that habit from my mum. I also do the same with the back of junk mail, bills, etc. my husband vring home all of the shredded paper from work and we use that as bedding for our hens (chooks).
December 20, 2007 at 8:19 am
Leah: Your blog inspired me to revisit that essay and rework it for Smart Spending. It looks as though it will run this Friday, Dec. 21. I’ll send you the URL when it does. Thanks for the encouragement!
December 21, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Good morning, Leah! That article is up at Smart Spending. Here’s the URL:
http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/smartspending/archive/2007/12/21/pushing-the-envelope-by-reusing-it.aspx