On that Saving-Money-And-End-Up-Being-Green front, Tamara Krinsky came up with this idea:
Save Paper By Increasing Your Margins
Really.
Now, I'm just quoting the math here from her site (yes, you don't want me to bring out my math, do you? No, you don't...):
"According to a study done by the Penn State Green Destiny Council, reducing margins to .75" on all sides results in a total reduction of paper by 4.75%. This means that using these Efficient Margins on a ton of paper saves 19 reams of paper, which saves 1.14 trees.
So, you ask, what's the big deal? 1.14 trees don't seem like much of a tree-savings for a whole ton of paper.
So cynical! Check these numbers out - they add up fast:
In 2003, the U.S. consumed approx. 5.4 million tons of office paper. If everyone used Efficient Margins, every year we would save 6,156,000 trees. "
Here's how to do it (once again, I'm stealing Tamara's stuff):
ON PCs:
Click on the MARGINS tab, and fill in your desired settings. Then click on the DEFAULT button (it's on the bottom of the Margins tab). You'll be offered "Do you want to change the default settings for the page set up? This change will affect all new documents based on the normal template." Click YES.
ON MACs:
On your WORD screen, go to FORMAT, then DOCUMENT.
Once on DOCUMENT, click on MARGINS and you'll be able to fill in the settings for your margins.
The problem here is, of course, you'll have to do this for every new document you create until people start telling Microsoft to build in a Paper Saving Option into their next release of Microsoft Office.
But let's stop our bellyaching about what "someone else can do to solve our problems" and just do it every time we make a new document, shall we? As Eldridge Cleaver once famously said, "You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem".
And no, I'm not calling Eldridge Cleaver cheap.
Or Green.
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