Open Writing

It takes about 17 trees (11 metres tall) to make about 1000 Kg of paper. With all the paper that comes into the homes, offices and shops, and mostly goes out as rubbish, 20 million Australians use about 34 million trees just for paper in a year.

Hugging trees can be less helpful than using less paper and packaging. But instead we are consuming more and more. (Good on www.bonzer.org.au using none!)

Since every one of us is important in the world, and what we do multiplied by 20 million can help to save the world or destroy it— what can we do? Enjoy not wasting!

People old enough to remember the war can remember not wasting paper. Then, and in older family records, letter-writers quite often, after filling both sides of a page, turned the sheet upside down and wrote more between the lines, and then up the sides. Sometimes over the envelope too. One correspondent wrote around the stamp as well. This I am not suggesting, but it makes a thought-provoking contrast to some of the layouts that have too much white space today. And still today, from poor countries, come letters that seem to be written on some tissue of dry leaves.

Society can do a great deal to reduce waste. For example:

* Printers that can use quarto and half-quarto size paper for business when A4 is silly, and that do not jam if thinner cheaper paper is used.

* Cutting the waste of paper in GST and billing requirements, and making it a sign of lack of skill if letters, memos, minutes etc. run on only a few lines extra, to require a new page.

* No fullpage ads allowed.

* Reuse grocery boxes—which requires labor—rather than recycling which uses energy, packaging that buyers can re-use, envelopes that can be re-used, longer displays for billboard paste-ups, co-operation between charities, less junk mail.

* It would be good if we could have newspapers with the option of buying the Eco-Version without the supplements, even if at the same price.

AT HOME

Here is a partial ABC of ideas:

* Use 'Green bags' rather than get paper bags, but when you do get paper bags, save what you can to re-use. I keep brown paper bags under the cake-tins, and department-store type bags on a clothes hanger on a hook on the back of a door, some of them inside other bags.

* If you can, have somewhere to keep boxes of different sizes to re-use as gift boxes, postage boxes, carrying, and packing.

* Cards can be re-used in many ways, including saving the best Christmas cards for your own National Gallery each Christmas, and cutting them up to make gift-tags.

* Re-use envelopes when possible—post-offices will give you stamp-selvedges to stick on addresses. I keep different sizes in different size boxes.

* Iron and re-use gift-wrapping paper, and/or use alternatives such as pretty scarves, and decorative shopping bags.

* Use butcher's paper instead of buying kitchen paper. It has dozens of uses.

* Photo copying is not a substitute for students actually reading

* Usew both side of a sheet of paper. Print double-sided whenever possible. Keep scrap paper in boxes or drawers, handy for writing notes and drafts

* Tea bags waste tonnes of paper or its substitute. An ordinary strainer in a teacup, or one of the stylish stainless steel deep strainers, can make tea that tastes nicer without the bag-taste, is just as easy, doesn't need disposal of the teabags, and the used tea is great compost. You can blend your own teas in the strainer. I like a mixture of breakfast and green tea.

* It is handy to have a box of tissues in the house, but for sneezing, handkerchiefs, including their washing, are more economic in all senses. They save money, and they save trees. They are softer and do not disintegrate, and do not continue your own cold, as the tissue ads claim. When folded as soon as dry, only the 'best' hankies need ironing.

* 'Lavatory Education' for all the public, since the greatest waste litters the floor in public lavatories. However, the more unbleached and unsuperprocessed your own lavatory paper, the less waste goes down the drain. It has been reported that men tend to be less prodigal in using toilet paper, folding it rather than scrunching it.

* Cardboard boxes for children's toys, storage, gift packaging etc. Children can help decorate them with pasted pictures, or even decoupage.

I think that I shall never see
Waste paper lovely as a tree.
But if our current waste don't fall,
We may not see a tree at all.

© Valerie Yule