Paper – personally I hardly use it at all – it gets lost, it makes a massive mess, it isn’t searchable etc… Mostly I use it only when forced to fill in pointless forms, for reading information that companies send me in the post, and reading books in bed.
Since the advent of email, the internet, the paperless office etc… you would have thought that printing and paper usage would have decreased but actually it has consistently and dramatically increased (see this and this).
So what are people on? I suspect it’s a combination of
- Advertising by corporations with vested interests
- The fact that the techology has got a lot cheaper
- An attachment to tangibility – “if I can’t hold it in my hand, it’s not real”.
About the lobbying and advertising, there’s not a lot we can do, but as for the attachment to tangibility, I think we should try to get over it. I suspect that for most people a small change of attitude would be enough. It’s a habit acquired in childhood to think that the real information is what’s written on paper and what you see on the screen is somehow second rate and virtual. This really isn’t necessary and once you get used to it, it’s much easier to deal with things electronically. I admit that reading a book at bed-time is currently better with paper, but I’m talking more about the reams of paper we waste printing out documents at work, emails, photographs, newspapers etc…. etc…
Here’s some suggestions
- Try to move correspondence into electronic form. If someone asks you to send a document by mail or fax, ask them if a scan sent by email would do. If someone gives you a printed document for comment, ask them to give it to you electronically. This takes the content off the paper circuit and puts further correspondence about the matter into electronic form.
- Don’t write letters – it costs money and clutters the place up.
- Use commenting tools to exchange ideas and make suggestions live on the screen instead of writing things on a printout and then having to make changes to your docs a second time.
- Try to use online services like the inland revenue tax return system in the UK. No paper involved and you are guided through the irrelevant parts.
- use the google desktop search to find things electronically. It almost makes filing systems obselete as it’s so quick to find virtually any document you’ve written among 10’s of thousands.