In 2006, UNC printed nearly 30 million pages, which, going off a metric from the Sierra Club’s website, took between 15,000 to 20,000 tons of wood to produce — that is a lot of trees that could have populated a park or forest.
UNC was on the fast track to making “The Lorax” a reality, but thankfully UNC’s paper usage is on the decline.
Due to initiatives like CCI Printing and a push for less required printing, UNC has now cut its yearly printing total to about 8 million pages. Efforts like these should be applauded and encouraged to expand. Trees are vital and should not be wasted lightly.
It is unreasonable to say UNC could become a paper-free campus soon, but any move to diminish paper waste — and by extension the University’s ecological footprint — should be welcomed by the entire community.
In addition to policy shifts, students and professors should also keep in mind the impacts of their own printing. While some assignments and reading demand to be printed, consider reading on your laptop or e-reader. The more conscious we are of our printing impacts, the more we can better reduce waste.
As the fight for a waste-free society continues on, it is important to stop and celebrate the small victories, and it is also important to recommit to decreasing our paper usage. Let’s not forget what the Lorax said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
