9.06.2007

i *am* making a difference

heard a story on npr's day to day about making little changes to help the environment. and it was actually something i'd been doing for years :: changing the margins on word processing documents to save paper.

changethemargins.com is a campaign to get people and companies to change the margins on documents; you can sign the petition to encourage microsoft to change the default margin from 1.25 inches to 0.75 inches. (i usually print half-inch margins, and am even known to go down to 0.12 inches on draft copies that are just for me.) a research team at penn state did a study showing the incredible savings in money, paper, and energy when this small change was instituted.

so, even if you don't sign the petition or get involved in this movement, at the very least, go to your ms word default settings and change the margins. you can save a tree. you might even save the planet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this! I always reduce the margins for drafts and I also change the print settings on specs, etc. that I need to print for work so that they print two 8 1/2" x 11" sheets onto one 8 1/2" x 11" which cuts the number of sheets paper I need to use in half. Much easier than printing every other sheet and then having to feed them back in to print on the reverse.

Anonymous said...

You teach me so many things Y! I always change my margins more because I am a cheap-O and can't see wasting paper...but know instead of being a cheap-O, I can call myself environmentally aware.

And hello...knucklehead with all that is computers that I am, never thought about changing the default in Word so it was done for me automatically...duh! But I figured out how to do it and got it done now!