Thinking before you print

During the 2016-17 school year, Lincoln Public Schools collectively printed over 90 million impressions*. Did your jaw just drop when you read that number? Believe it or not, that is actually a decrease of 7 million impressions from the previous school year. It is great to see that we are moving in the right direction, but perhaps we can be improving our efforts to cut back on printing even more.

There is certainly still immense value in putting pencil to paper for many lessons, but the available technology in the district allows us to prioritize what requires printing and what may not. With the rollout of Chromebooks to second-12th grade students, there is the hope and the expectation that there will be a decrease in printing, and therefore a reduction in paper waste.

So how can we cut back?

  1. Before you hit submit on the order for the print shop, or hit the print button, take time to reconsider if that is necessary. Maybe it is! But, maybe it isn’t…
  2. Check your printer settings. Is double sided printing your default? It should be!
  3. Does it really need to be in color? We are usually wiser about this option since we know it is more expensive, but it also uses more resources.
  4. Making copies? Double check again to see if you are able to do 2-sided printing and the black and white option

The good news is that if you do print something, we have the option to recycle it. Many of our schools are doing a wonderful job of making sure paper waste ends up in the recycling container.  Last school year we recycled over 500,000 lbs of office paper as a district, which equates to saving almost 4,500 trees. But, if we remember our lesson in the three R’s, we know that the preferred order is to reduce our waste, before we move on to reusing or recycling.

Some schools are exploring friendly competitions between grade levels or departments to see who can reduce their printing the most, and the LPS Sustainability Department is happy to help with setting that up. So next time you are about to hit ‘Print’, stop and think about what you can be doing to help the district continue reducing its printing for the 2017-18 school year.

*An impression is print on one side. If you printed double sided, that would be 2 impressions.