Sick of putting so much money into printer supplies?
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the United States of America goes through about 68 Million tons of paper and paperboard each year. Wow! That seems like a lot, especially considering how many of us rely on electronic documents that we email or share to our friends, co-workers, colleagues, etc. Crazy.
Anyway, based on the amount of paper being used, it is probably safe to assume we use just as much ink when we are printing out our school papers, our work emails, docs, pdf’s, etc. So here’s a quick tip on helping out with paper usage and ink supply that is easy to do and helps not just the environment but how much you spend on your printer.
At the UWIT Help Desk, we found a big old box and put a “Recycle” sign on it. We set it next to the printer and it is amazing how quickly it fills up. We have to dump that box about once a month. If you don’t have that box make one and see how often people choose to recycle over throwing paper away. There should be a recycle bin somewhere in the building and once it is full just dump in the bin and start over. When you receive documents electronically, ask yourself if you need to print it out. Try to make yourself only look at them electronically. You will find, once you get in the habit of it, there is hardly anything you need to physically print. You can send the file to your phone, your laptop, your ipad, or save it to an online storage place like google docs or dropbox and have the file anywhere you can get on the internet; which means, less paper and less to carry around.
Now a simple, but neat way to help on your printing costs deals with your email font. By changing the default font you use on your email client you can save ink costs for everyone you send to, as well as yourself. The font you should go with is Century Gothic. Century Gothic actually uses less ink when printed to paper, simply because of the sleekness of the font. You can still read the font very well and won’t have any problems looking at it, while at the same time not eat up all your ink, like other fonts can.
If you use Microsoft Outlook 2011 you can change this by going to the File Tab and clicking on Options. Then highlight Mail, Choose Stationary and Fonts and change the font to Century Gothic for both New Mail Messages and Replies and Forwards. If you have trouble or a different version of Microsoft Office feel free to contact the UWIT Help Desk at 307 766-4357, option #1. We would be happy to assist you in working on your carbon footprint!
By-
Brett Williams, Help Desk Manager From Laramie, WY
The It Blog 