Energy Awareness Project: Consumption of White Paper by the Average Juneau High School Student

Why is this important?  Paper products are the largest contributors into our landfill, they are a major factor in deforestation, and make up a large part of the budget in our schools.  Cutting down our use of white office paper will have a large impact on the size of our rubbish heap, the cost to our environment in trees cut down as well as fossil fuels burned to harvest the trees, and will also save our public school system a large amount of money.  

The Big Picture:  We are wasting millions of sheets of paper and far too many tax payer dollars on poor technologies.  By reducing the amount of paper consumed great impacts can be made in the consumption of paper and money spent.  

Specifically: When the quantity of paper consumed by the average high school student at JDHS is multiplied by the number of days in a school year then by the number of years at the high school, then multiplied to represent national trends the figures are astounding.  We could make great advances in environmental protection and save tax payer dollars.

Methodology:  I will follow the average high school student at JDHS through a typical week and count the sheets of paper that are being doled out in this week.  This figure will then be used to find the number of sheets consumed per week, per month, per year, per school, etc.  The number of sheets of paper and the monetary costs of this will be taken into account.  Alternatives such as font size, paper margins, front to back printing, and accepting digital work will be examined and presented in contrast to the current system.  For example looking at a typical document:

• 12 pt font
• 1.25" margin
• double spaced
• one sided
• 100 page document 
  

Then change to:

• 10 pt font, .75" margins
• single spaced
• double sided

This document then turns into a 15 page document...100 pages to 15 pages!  Can you imagine when this is multiplied by all high school students across the country today.