Not terribly green…
Today I received a notification from the Nationwide building society in a long white envelope. The information was on a slip of paper (a quarter of an A4 sheet). Good thinking Nationwide! Cutting back on wasted paper. Excellent!
However... the slip was enfolded inside a full sheet of A4, bearing the words
PLEASE DISCARD THIS INSERT.
ENCLOSED FOR PRODUCTION PURPOSES ONLY.
One step forward; four steps back. Presumably nobody had worked out that it would have been cheaper in time and paper to print the info on the big sheet and not bother with the slip at all.
The problem obviously lies with their envelope stuffing gear, and no doubt they will be working on that and get it right one day. We hope…
Meanwhile, I wonder how many hundred thousand people will be getting a sheet of completely wasted paper in their post today? How many trees does that represent? And how much wasted fuel in the cutting and transportation etc?
Just by the by… do you, dear reader, buy jotting pads? Surely not! If you take a sheet of one-sided A4 scrap (or two-sided if it's from Nationwide), you can fold it in half and tear it. Then fold the halves into three and tear again. Thus each bit of rubbish paper gives you six handy jotter-sized slips. I use them by the thousand in my writing, and by the dozen for shopping lists and aide memoires. In the kitchen we have a wad secured by a bulldog clip, with a pencil attached to the clip by a piece of string. It never gets lost, and every time I use it I get a warm glow, knowing I've recycled a bit of otherwise wasted paper. Eventually the scraps get burned on the Raeburn, so they are used yet again, and I get an even warmer glow. Wonderful things, Raeburns.
However... the slip was enfolded inside a full sheet of A4, bearing the words
PLEASE DISCARD THIS INSERT.
ENCLOSED FOR PRODUCTION PURPOSES ONLY.
One step forward; four steps back. Presumably nobody had worked out that it would have been cheaper in time and paper to print the info on the big sheet and not bother with the slip at all.
The problem obviously lies with their envelope stuffing gear, and no doubt they will be working on that and get it right one day. We hope…
Meanwhile, I wonder how many hundred thousand people will be getting a sheet of completely wasted paper in their post today? How many trees does that represent? And how much wasted fuel in the cutting and transportation etc?
Just by the by… do you, dear reader, buy jotting pads? Surely not! If you take a sheet of one-sided A4 scrap (or two-sided if it's from Nationwide), you can fold it in half and tear it. Then fold the halves into three and tear again. Thus each bit of rubbish paper gives you six handy jotter-sized slips. I use them by the thousand in my writing, and by the dozen for shopping lists and aide memoires. In the kitchen we have a wad secured by a bulldog clip, with a pencil attached to the clip by a piece of string. It never gets lost, and every time I use it I get a warm glow, knowing I've recycled a bit of otherwise wasted paper. Eventually the scraps get burned on the Raeburn, so they are used yet again, and I get an even warmer glow. Wonderful things, Raeburns.
posted by Chas Griffin at 2:23 pm
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