After reading this, please consider sending a link to your friends.
 
On June 12, 2008, NPR’s Terry Gross covered a group of 4th Graders in Watertown, MA requesting town governments to do a simple thing to help our environment.  They got their town to develop policy and they’ve gone on to the state as well.  This simple notion can benefit you in reduced costs and time savings but the planet as well:
 
Reduce your paper margins and ask those around you to do the same.
 
Reduce your page margins and compress your line spacing on reports.  Reducing margins from ½” to ¼” saves more than 5% of your total paper consumption.   Many organizations have gone to electronic transmittals and websites; however, you still take the risk that they’re printed on the other end. 
 
Let’s imagine for a second that this concept went beyond a few towns to governmental agencies, highly regulated industries, software companies, publishers, and others.  Truly, this can be small but effective way to change our planet, reduce our dependency on oil, reduce your business costs, and live healthier lives. 
 
I am respectfully asking for you to take one or more of the following steps:
 
1.       Ask your office to change their templates to ¼” margins.  Have the discipline to change your boilerplates.  Put a label on your monitors reminding you to save paper.
 
2.       Ask your customers to do the same.  Take time out to write your local elected officials to do the same.  4th Graders have done it, why can’t you?
 
3.       Place the following verbiage on your header page at the top or bottom:  “Please consider the planet before printing this document.”
 
4.       Reconsider how you market your business and provide URLs on the back of business cards instead of handing out brochures.
 
5.        If you work for a software company, ask them to change their default margins in anything that might be printed.
 
6.       If you work for  bank, financial firm, legal firm, insurance firm, anyone who might have detailed specifications or agreements over one page, get them to make this concept corporate policy.
 
7.       If you work for a magazine or newspaper, please change your policy regarding white space.  Gross weight does not make better reading.  Go electronic if you possibly can, offering people the choice of how they receive your great work:  Electronically or the print version.  You’ll find marketing your policies attract more readers with the added benefit of helping our environment.
 
8.       Flip your paper over and print on the back.
 
9.       Remember, it’s not just the paper.  It’s the ink cartridges (oil), the carbon emissions from producing and transporting paper – it’s the energy and resources expended throughout the entire supply chain. 
 
10.   Think twice before printing.

Some useful links about how reducing your paper margins save trees:

Change the Margins

Conserve A Tree

My Blog Post about this topic

Washington Post Coverage