This is a follow-up to my Tuesday 2/3 presentation where I asked about reducing CU's paper usage. You may recall my slide about Governor Ritter's directive for state agencies to reduce paper consumption by 20% and to adopt zero waste operations.
Here's your chance to influence the direction of CU's efforts. Regarding paper reduction, what commonly used hard copies should we target for reduction, conversion and/or elimination? What are the biggest sources of paper waste you see? Please consider at least the following criteria (amount of material reduced, ease of access to alternatives (i.e. online), suitability for conversion (what hard copies might we still need?)
Regarding other zero waste efforts on campus, I'm curious about other areas where we can seriously reduce, if not totally eliminate landfill disposal. What's the biggest wastes you see on campus?
Feel free to contact me directly if you're interested in these topics academically either through this course or future courses/independent studies at CU. E-mail me at debell@colorado.edu
Cheers!
- Jack DeBell
I would say that syllabi could easily be reduced. In fact, it may actually prove beneficial to have them all only available in online format anyways. Also, a lot of older teachers seem to prefer hard copies of work. For example, I have an ECON class where we have to turn in at least 5 pages of hard copy excel graphs per week to the professor. We could easily send these as an attachment to an email, but he only accepts hard copies. It may be the generation gap, but I think that a simple action like this could be easily attained. Of course there are still things that need to be hard copy (i.e. legal documents, documents requiring signatures, etc.), however CU could probably reduce paper by 50% with a little effort.
ReplyDeleteExcellent input Benjamin. Others?
ReplyDeleteHow about textbooks? Every student buys several textbooks every semester, ranging from the thick hardcover books to your average 200 page paperback. I'm sure most of these books are recycled upon reaching the end of their lifespan, but it would more beneficial if these books weren't ever ordered (I'm sure some get thrown into the dumpster).
ReplyDeleteAn increasing number of textbooks offer electronic versions, that theoretically, should be cheaper than the paper version. Professors should be encouraged to require these options.
Another issue is professors always requiring the latest edition of texts, when the new editions have very little new information. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but freshman year I took an intro astronomy class that required a new edition of the text, costing almost $200. Because it was new, it was not available used. Sure enough, the next semester's class was using a brand new edition with only one additional chapter that no intro class would ever use, so I couldn't sell it back. Guess who wrote the book, and presumable profits from the bookstore ordering 500 new copies of his book every semester? The professor. Requests for new editions should be reviewed by the department and unanimously agreed on to avoid wasteful ordering of new editions.