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The most important way to tackle waste is simply to avoid making it. If you don’t produce it, you don’t have to dispose of it.
· Think before you print. Use USB flash drives or other drives to save work you’ve generated on your computer, and utilize email to send documents and memos (colleagues are less likely to misplace them anyhow, and you’ll have a record of sending them out). This works great if you are doing a presentation with handouts. Take email addresses of those who are interested and send the handouts electronically rather than hauling all that paper to the presentation. Your audience will then be freed up to listen to what you have to say rather than worry about taking notes.
· If you need to print, print and copy double-sided—many office printers and copiers can “auto-duplex”.
· Reduce your margin settings so that your printer uses less paper.
· To conserve even more ink, print in draft mode. It will generally lighten the shade, but you’ll still be able to read your copy clearly.
· Download your software. More than 30 billion CDs are sold annually – enough to wrap around the earth. That’s 5 CDs produced each year for each person on the planet. With more than 1 billion unwanted computer disks being thrown away each year, that’s a huge amount of waste, not to mention the packing material—55 million boxes. Most software, including most mainstream “for-pay” productivity and office software, can be downloaded online.
· Drop off plastic shopping bags to the residence hall front desks where they will be returned to in-store recycling drop off locations.
· Use cloth shopping bags that can be reused!
· Bring a zero-waste lunch to work in a reusable container. This has a two-fold benefit: you cut down on waste from take-out, and reuse what you bring.
· Bring and keep mugs and silverware in the office to reduce use of plastic ware and paper cups.