Pay-Per: A Lenten Carbon Fast Challenge

Today's Lenten Carbon Fast challenge: (courtesy of my bloggy friend Small Footprints):



Yes, I have a set of paper-saving
"silly feet" cake cups!

"Save paper today. Don't print unless you need to and when you do, print double-sided onto recycled paper. Use paper, tissue, toilet paper and wood that is recycled or has been accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council. This ensures it has come from responsibly managed sustainable forests or confirms that it is recycled."

I have a few tips for saving paper:

• I don't have my printer plugged in. It's amazing the amount of stuff I don't print, because hooking up my printer takes effort - not a lot of effort (powering on, plugging in a cable/figuring out the wireless) - but just enough to discourage unneeded printing. This not incidentally saves the electricity wasted from idling the printer. Most things are easier to read on my laptop anyway, because I can zoom text and read without my glasses.
• I ship books using repurposed cardboard, instead of buying new padded envelopes. Lots of stores give away cartons to cut up, so I save money this way. I wrote about this in Carbon Neutral Book Shipping.
• My mother-in-law needed a copy of a lengthy legal document to send to her sister's lawyer. I was going to take it to the copy shop and send it priority mail, when we hit upon the idea of scanning it into a pdf. This turned out to take not much more time than copying it; we were able to email the pdf so the lawyer got it almost immediately (and email postage costs zero!); and we still have the file in case we need to send another copy - saving money, storage space and paper!
• Today I tried the re-usable silicon cupcake "papers" and am happy to report they work great! I was initially wierded out by the concept, but they really don't melt when you back with them, they have no apparant effect on the taste of the cupcake, and they don't seem to need washing - they pop right off the cupcake as you eat. This is a minor savings in money and paper, but every little bit helps, and cupcakes are serious business! Plus - with silicon you can get the "silly feet" effect (see photo) which is very hard to duplicate with paper. I'll use up my existing stock of cupcake papers but after that, it's silicon all the way baby!