UA could reduce paper usage, benefit environment

In the last few years, I’ve made a number of visits to the University of Arizona with the dual purpose of visiting my girlfriend — a UA anthropology major — and looking into UA’s graduate programs. While I’ve been impressed with the far-reaching research the environmental colleges have been working on, I couldn’t help but notice something troubling during my brief visits to campus: the paper usage on the UA’s campus.

In one class I attended, each student received a hefty packet. Flipping through my copy, I was somewhat disappointed to see that the 15 pages were single-sided, along with plenty of empty white space on the printed side. There must have been at least a thousand pages’ worth of packets in the classroom that day — a thousand pages which, while it’s easy to forget, were made using finite resources in a way that emitted environmental pollution. Although this may not be the norm for all classes, based on my discussions with UA students, I feel certain that paper is often used in this way on campus.

Many solutions exist to reduce the UA’s paper use. The thousand pages could be cut in half by setting printers to print on both sides by default. This number could be decreased even more by ensuring that the documents to be printed are formatted to reduce blank space. Another way to save paper would be to use the existing D2L system for most (if not all) readings, as students would then not need to print out every page of every document.

For pages that do need to be printed out, the UA can use some of the money it saves by consuming less paper to switch to 100 percent recycled paper. The UA should also use its existing sustainability website to educate students and faculty about these issues and to encourage them to recycle all of the paper they use. Lastly, the UA can improve its score in its ongoing competition with ASU to recycle more of its toner cartridges and use more recycled cartridges — a competition the Wildcats have been losing this year.

I am confident that the UA can take these steps to reduce its paper use, and thus reduce both the university’s ecological footprint as well as its monetary costs.

Ian Shiach

Environmental science junior

Colorado College

An open letter to college

Fall semester is over, and it went by fast. You kept me insane and sane at the same time. You got my head stuck in books, stuck online, stuck with a pencil or pen in my hand, you got me stuck on you.

Although it’s only fall semester, I am already getting tired of you. Just imagine, three more years of you in my life plus more, will cause a lot of brain damage, although beneficially. Because in the long run, I am counting on you to get me where I want to be, and I am counting on myself.

Even though I still miss high school and I still like high school more than college, I know I will benefit from you more than high school. College, you are the same old same old as high school, just with more work, more serious things to learn and just more benefits come out of you.

I hope you take me far in life. I am gonna knock these college years out the window, and get to my career so I can be settled already. That’s all I want, to be settled and financially stable.

Cyril Pangan

Pre-physiology freshman