Sustainable Printing

I have seen plenty of resources available to opt out of junk mail (if you haven’t, let me know & I’ll write a post about it), but what about the gigantic phone books that seem to randomly show up periodically throughout the year?  I came across a website that has started a very passionate campaign to stop the delivery of unwanted yellow & white pages. (more…)

This video produced by Inform Inc. was made last summer, and shows briefly the beginning and the end of the paper life-cycle.  I enjoyed this very much and wanted to share it with my readers.

I do agree with many of the points made in the video about our need to use less, use recycled and recycle more for true sustainability.  I am hoping more “tree less” papers become widely available both to the printing industry and to individual consumers.  I intend to research more into what alternative papers are already available on the market, and I’ll be sure to let you know what I find.

Did this video enlighten you to anything you didn’t already know?

Related Post - 5 Tree Free Papers for Printers

Last night I participated in Earth Hour, an event in which we turned off our lights for one full hour.  No TV, no computers, no lights.  What’s amazing to me is that one hour is actually quite a good chunk of time when you don’t have things coming at you fifty miles a minute.  Why do I always feel as if there are never enough hours in the day?

It was simple and quiet at my house between 8:30 and 9:30 PM.  We had 2 candles lit.  My husband usually goes to bed around 8:30 for work, so he and I and our 2 year old all went into our bedroom and laid down.  The candle light flickered on the wall and was truly entertaining for our son.  “Wow” was all he could say as he tried to “catch” the shadows.  I showed him my 3 pretty solid shadow puppets (the goose, the bunny and the bird), but he was more interested in looking at my hands rather than the shadows they created.

After Jesse got restless and hubby was already asleep, we took our candle into Jesse’s room and looked at a few books.  While it was nothing like living in “days of old”, I couldn’t help but feel like I was taking a step back into history.  Reading books by candle light seemed so magical in a way.  The colors of the illustrations were so different than looking at them with our lights on.  The flicker of the candle seemed to make the teddy bears on the pages dance.  It was whimsical!

I was able to devote my full attention to spending time with our family.  I reflected on the blessings God has given me and the human race in general.  I think I’ll try to incorporate an “Earth Hour” every week in my home.  My husband thought it would be great to eat our dinner every night by candle light and just focus on each other.  I have to say, I love the idea!

A couple of weeks ago on Sustainable Printing, I posted about Earth Hour 2009.  This is just a reminder that the event is for this evening, so get out the candles and plan an hour of fun in the dark!

I was listening to a local radio station yesterday when a news broadcast came on announcing the final printing of an Ann Arbor newspaper later this year.  I didn’t catch the official number, but it said this paper has been in circulation for over 170 years, but will now have a digital publication.  At the very end of the news piece, the announcer said, “Several jobs will be lost”.

My heart is just sad that some newspapers that have been bringing news to the masses are getting rid of their print editions.  The San Francisco Chronicle, in business for 146 years, was shut down earlier this year.  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now out of print.  Newspapers and magazines all over the country are ceasing their print production and moving towards digital digests (or shutting down altogether) due to rising costs and lower readership.  I feel like we’re losing some of our history by saying bye-bye to printed news.

I know there are plenty of people out there who are anti-print in all its forms, but newspapers are a great example of printing responsibly.  The newspaper industry was one of the firsts to utilize soy-based inks.  I’ve seen statistics that some 90%-95% of printed newspapers are printed with soy-based inks.  Most newsprint paper is at least some percentage recycled.  And there are so many ways to reuse newspapers from lining a kitty litter box to wrapping presents.  Newspapers are so easy to recycle, it’s a shame we may not have them around for too much longer.

Maybe we are heading toward a truly digital world.  Libraries will be turned into museums, classrooms will be filled with computers (a lot of them are already) and paper routes will be mass emails.  Still, I hope we can hang on to printed news a little while longer.