No Paper for a Day

The concept behind No Paper for a Day is not to reduce paper usage entirely;  there are indeed situations where paper presents the best current option for information sharing.  Rather, we hope that thinking in terms of “What would my options be if all photocopiers and printers were turned off for a day?” will help spur some ideas that will significantly help reduce paper consumption.  Paper use is on the rise at BCIT (and, arguably, globally as printing technologies improve) so our goals are:

• Good:  Ensure that paper use doesn’t increase in 2009-2010
• Better:  Reduce Paper Consumption in the School of Business (and BCIT as a whole) by 10%
• Best:  Reduce Paper Consumption at BCIT by 20%

This post will assemble some current best practices and allow you to share ideas that you already have implemented in your classrooms.  Our next post will allow for new ideas and share some news from other campus initiatives across North America.

Best Practices in Education:

1. Distribute Class Notes electronically before class using My.BCIT.ca or Share-in/Share-out
2. Print / Photocopy all handout’s double sided when necessary (most of our printers and photocopiers in the School of Business have duplexers so check your print settings).  To allow duplex printing in WINXP, select START - PRINTERS and FAXES - Rightclick your default printer and select PROPERTIES and add the Duplex option under the Device Tab.
3. Consider distributing Study Packs electronically.  Some schools are moving towards electronic textbooks aswell.
4. Distribute Course Outlines to students electronically (will save over 50,000 copies in the SoB alone)
5. Encourage students to use some form of netstorage to access files anywhere.  You can vew information about how BCIT handles netstorage through “Personal Files”
6. Use flash drives or email to transfer documents to/from home or to/from students
7. (Re)Use paper from your recycle bin to print out notes, adgenda’s or emails if necessary
8. Consider alternate testing methods or condensed printing of multiple choice exams that are typically used for an hour, stored for two years and then recycled.
9. …
10. Communication is so important:  ie “Think Before You Ink” campaign -

Please enter your comments (below) with new ideas and I will add the most impactful methods for reducing paper use in our top 10 list.  The list will also be maintained at our Facebook Group and we will be launching a survey to keep a running total lof how your paper reduction activities have contributed.