Big Red Goes Green
In my Roman history class last winter, we received ten-paged, double-sided packets of reading every day. I found myself drafting and printing essays only to find a small typo and having to toss the paper into the trash before reprinting an edited version. I thought to myself at one point near the end of the term, “Wow, I have used a lot of paper for this class.”
Paper is an integral part of nearly every Exeter course. Guidelines and prompts for history essays, fill-in-the-blank worksheets for biology and grammar sheets for Latin all come in the form of single-sided, letter-sized paper. Binders of hundred-paged math problem packets circle the Harkness tables, as do half-page assignments in English.
Aside from classes, certain hardcore clubs are infamous for their printouts – after all, even this very newspaper is printed on paper, with hundreds of copies in circulation every week. In an effort to recognize the amount of paper waste at this school, the Mock Trial team plants a symbolic tree every year.
That annual action is likely just the team’s playful way of bragging about their extra workload. In all seriousness, how much unnecessary paper are we wasting as a school? Physics and math problems are all available online, yet many of us, myself included, still purchase the overpriced hard copy at the bookstore. Too often, I throw away rough drafts of essays into the trash when a recycling bin isn’t in sight; too often, I ask for another copy of a packet only to find the original crumpled up in my backpack.
Each of these small foibles, however, surmount to extreme environmental damage. In 2014, America used 20 million tons of paper—to put that into context, one ton of office paper amounts to about 24 trees. To make matters worse, only 53 percent of this paper was recycled. Deforestation across the world destroys habitats and contributes to global warming; 35 percent of deforestation is caused by paper usage around the world.
Of course, I’m not demanding that the entire campus go completely paperless overnight. After all, it is implausible in many cases, including many tests, to rely solely on electronic devices. But there are simple steps we can take as individuals and as a campus to alleviate the problem as much as we can.
Each student can easily proofread papers on their screen one more time before sending the document for print. And when this failsafe breaks, we should all look for the recycling bin—it’s not that difficult to hold on to sheets of paper for a few extra minutes. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, people should avoid printing things out when they’re available online! This includes writing prompts and math and science homework.
More importantly, faculty have the power and responsibility to implement fundamental change. We have access to online tools with so many sharing abilities. How much paper would we save if every teacher received digital copies of rough drafts and posted comments on Google Docs? What if they received writing assignments and posted all reading packets through Canvas?
The most recent draft of the strategic plan states that “it is now our ambitious goal to make sustainability at Exeter a foundational community-wide principle, through our actions and decisions.” Of course, many other courses of action, ranging from divestment to reducing food waste, are necessary for us to achieve this goal as a campus. Nonetheless, we need to begin with small steps and modify the way we approach our classes to easily create significant change.