Buying Recycled Copy Paper
I don't go through a ton of copy paper at home. The only items I print out are shipping labels, VMS orders, mapquest directions and my grocery list form that I made in excel which has rows of categorical headers in the same order as they are found in the aisles at Kroger's. Yeah, that's an actual image of it right there - I like to take my geekness to the next level.Jealous much?
Anyhow, I may not use a lot of paper, but from now on I'm going to make sure that anything I do print out, is printed on recycled paper. Every office supply store these days carries a wide selection of enviro-friendly paper options. Staples offers three different products including Earth Choice, which is FSC Certified, as well as a generic 30% Recycled Content and a 100% Recycled Content paper. The generic recycled paper also has the advantage of being processed without any chlorine or chlorine compounds. Double Bonus!
So from henceforth, rather than ask hubby to grab a ream of any old paper on his way home, I'll be trundling off to Staples myself to buy 100% Recycled Copy Paper.
Savings:
I'm really raising the bar here, from 0% recycled to 100% recycled. It costs a bit more ($6.49 per ream compared with $4.49 for no recycled content), but it's worth it to me. Now if I could convince hubby to make the switch at his office -- that would really be something!
Difficulty Level: 1 out of 5
Not much extra work, considering I only buy a ream every couple of months. The extra $2.00 hurts, but only because it forces me to listen to hubby's old "going green costs a lot of green" argument.
5 comments:
We are trying out the 30% recycled at work. It's not as blindingly bright white as the regular paper (thanks, dioxin!), but if you aren't looking at them side-by-side, you can't really tell it's any different. The big plus of the 30% over the 100% recycled is the price - at Staples, the 30% recycled costs the same as the regular paper.
At home I print on the back of all the #$%& paper that comes home from the kids' school. Most home-use paper is not going anywhere other than the grocery store or the file drawer, so it doesn't have to look its Sunday best.
I'm also saving work paper that is printed on one side, as long as there isn't any financial information on the printed side.
That's a question I have - how comfortable are people with recycling paper that has personal or financial information on it?
We also use the back side of all usable paper that comes home from school, flyers, what not.
My husband actually has made the switch at his office! Or at least set in motion no more non-recycled paper. I'm not sure if they've used up their virgin paper reserves. His office has 80-90 people so it will make much more of an impact than my efforts at home. :)
Does anybody wonder how come it costs more to make paper from paper than from new cut trees which must be toxically broken down into pulp first?
Or why it costs more for organic food raised using compost from waste products than food raised with pesticides and chemical fertilizers?
Market volume is just a cover excuse for the reluctance of interests vested in extremely sloppy, harmful, profitable processes to cede to more efficient, actually less expensive, healthy methods. There have been forests worth of books written about it, yet here we are spending extra money for less expensive products because in the out of control corporatization of the US version of capitalism, demand doesn't keep the market honest, supply glutting marginalizes legitimate, superior competition into the connoisseur niche. Considering the exposé on bottled water coming from taps, even the connoisseur niche is no haven for health either.
Any ideas how to change this here in the land of the free? Sorry for the rant, Erin, its MTSD (Mid Traumatic Stress Disorder) and conscientious objector fatigue breakin' out all over.
Dude, you need an intervention over those spreadsheet shopping lists. For reals. Anal much?
New to your blog, love it, and OMG those anal shopping lists? I am so totally going to have to make one (smile).
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