Our Director of Technology, Andrei Henriksan, and I co-wrote and distributed the following message as an email (not a paper memo) to all St. Gregory employees.
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Hello Everyone:
As you may have heard at the meeting this morning, we are really pleased to see that we have considerably reduced paper usage in the copiers in the past several years.
You can see the progress as follows:

2009 = 610,643 or 50,887 per month

2010 = 488,625 or 40,719 per month (down 19%)

2011 = 197,733 or 32,955 per month (down 19%)

This 19%, or 1,681 lbs, savings represents:

  • 14 trees
  • 13.7 barrels of oil
  • 5883.5 gallons of water
  • 50 lbs of air pollution prevented from being released
  • 2.8 cubic yards of landfill space
  • 3,446 kWh of electricity. That’s enough to power the average home for 118 days

On a school year basis, the numbers look like this:

2009-10= 534048, or 44,504 per month

2010-11=442487, or 36,873 per month (down 17%).

As you can see by looking at the 2011 rate to date, our paper reduction rate improved considerably over the course of last school year, 2010-11.

We very much hope, intend and expect that student and teacher use of laptops and netbooks, and google apps, schoology, and other “cloud” applications can assist us in moving ever closer to a nearly, though probably never entirely, paperless school environment.   This is great for the environment, and it saves money too.  It is also increasingly the way careers and colleges will work in the future, and it is useful preparation for our students (and ourselves).

To help celebrate and perpetuate this great progress (!) in paper reduction, we are introducing the St. Gregory Paper Use Challenge!

In December, and again in May, we will award the 2 teachers who have the lowest rates of paper usage, and the 2 teachers who reduce their paper usage the most from the previous calendar period, with a $25 gift card to the store of your choice.

Mini-tips for paper reduction:

  • Create, edit, communicate and store documents electronically.
  • Distribute assignments, homework, and other class handouts from your classroom site.
  • Convert printed materials in to digital handouts by scanning to PDF.  (THIS IS A GREAT WAY TO GO!)
  • Adjust your document margins: Using smaller margins means you can fit more on the page.
  • find more resources and suggestions here: http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/search/label/paperless%20classroom
Do you have a suggestion?  Take a moment to share a suggestion by using the comment box below, or emailing me at jmartin@stgregoryschool.org or Andrei at ahenriksan@stgregoryschool.org