Once the calculator was completed I started looking for ways that the Chamber could reduce their Carbon Footprint which I quickly discovered wasn't as easy as I thought. The Chamber rents a space in The Waters Building and in order to get an idea of how much the Chamber uses in utilities I had to take The Waters Building utility usage as a whole and deduct the percentage that the chamber uses.
I wanted my first effort at reducing the footprint to something tangible that I could track. My first idea was paper. As of right now the Chamber uses 270,000 sheets of 100% Virgin Paper (no recycled content in our paper) per year. A switch from our current paper to one with a 30% recycled content would reduce our CO2 emissions from 1.4 metric tons/year to .5 metric tons/year.
There is more to the story...
The switch to paper with a recycled content would increase our paper cost by $270/year. In order to offset the cost of the switch we came up with a challenge for our staff here at the Grand Rapids Chamber.
The 3 Sheet Challenge!
The chamber currently uses 270,000 sheets of virgin paper per year. That is 24 sheets per person per day.
1 Tree = roughly 8,333.3 sheets of paper aka the Chamber uses about 32 trees per year for paper!
If everyone in the chamber reduced their paper usage by 3 sheets a day it would save the chamber 33,480 sheets per year! That is a 12.4% reduction in our current paper usage and a 2% overall price savings (if we switch to 30% recycled content).
If the chamber switches to a 30% recycled content paper it would save 9.6 trees a year!
We are going to be kicking off this initiative at our next staff meeting so suggestions on how to reduce usage are appreciated.
Here are a few that I have found:
1. Have your copiers default setting be double sided
2. Have a "draft tray" so all of your drafts print on scrap paper
3. Instead of meeting handouts have them shown on a screen or sent to everyone electronically
4. Actually use the editing tools on word <--that one was for me
5. Double think about what you are printing
Now what?
Friday, July 9 I stopped at Paper Central on 36th st to talk about recycled paper. I spoke with John who assured me that printing on recycled content paper is no different than using virgin paper. He also said many companies are apprehensive to use recycled paper because of the increase cost.
Here is my challenge to you, take it upon yourself and your company to make the switch but offset the cost by reducing the amount you use. As I wrote in my previous post, recycling is great but you also need to reduce and reuse.
How have you used the Carbon Footprint Calculator to reduce your Carbon emissions? Do you need access to the calculator? Email me at Albersa@grandrapids.org!
(here are some photos I snapped while at Paper Central)
John said when looking for paper with a recycled content look at the label. This is HITECH30 which means it is 30% recycled content paper.
<-- I just thought this poster was funny
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