A small school prints 75,822 (single-sided) sheets of paper each year. If an average tree can offer 30,000 sheets of 8.5×11 sheets of office paper, how many trees would the school save if they move to duplex (double sided) printing?
Let’s assume they print exactly 75,822 pages and every print job is duplex.
75,822/2 = 37,911 or the number of physical sheets of paper printed.
If the average tree at the paper mill this school buys from can produce 30,000 sheets of standard weight 8.5×11 office paper, they would save approximately 1.2637 trees per year, which can be rounded to 1.3 for simplicity’s sake.
According to Arbor Environmental Alliance a single tree can absorb around 48 lbs of CO2. Now this will vary as the size of the tree, but utilizing this estimate, how many additional pounds of CO2 will that 1 and 0.3 of a tree, absorb each year? In order to find out, I multiplied 48 by 1.3 to get 62.4 pounds of C02. In the United States, that is the average weight of an average 9-year-old child or almost the weight of an average Golden Retriever dog. This number may not sound like a whole lot, but remember this is from a single small school. If every school (especially larger schools and universities) pitched in, it would add up pretty quickly. This shows how an action as small as buying a duplex printer and leaving the print settings automatically at the duplex option, can save a ton of paper and trees.
This is a great example of how small things can make a huge impact. Something as small as making ‘duplex’ printing the standard in regards to sheets of homework and readings, can have a substantial difference on the world if everyone else joins too. Its the same as recycling, if one family does it, it is a benefit however the problem is to raise awareness and necessity to all members of the world to join the cause.
I liked your example of the two sides sheets of paper, it never really occurred to me how all those unnecessary sheets of paper were detrimental (to the extent you mentioned) to our planet.
I think that this is such a good example of simple sustainability that we can practice in each of our lives. The idea that by clicking 1 button before printing you can have a real effect on the climate is powerful. I really hope that schools and other large organizations that use a lot of paper adopt these sorts of practices.