printing

The printing press is often claimed to be one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It has given us a way to store and pass knowledge, ideas, and adventures to each other and to future generations and that truly is an accomplishment worth some major press, but there is a negative side to the printed word which comes in the form of lost resources and gained waste. Books are one of the most obvious products of paper and print, but are not the most numerous by a long shot. Every day we print miles worth of paper, glossy or matte, just to turn around and toss it in the trash tomorrow. Newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and games all add up to one big stack of clear cut trees. Here are some tips to make your quick information fix a little more eco-friendly.



Newspapers may be being replaced slowly by the internet but there are still more than ten million tonnes of newspaper thrown into landfills every year or about 30% of the newspapers printed. Consider getting your news and Sudoku fix online and you’ll be saving yourself a lot of money over time and you don’t have to sort through all the sections that you don’t want. Think about how many sections in the newspaper you actually read, chances are you aren’t interested in the whole thing anyways and news online is updated as it happens. If you just can’t give up the physical news fix consider subscribing, you’ll save money, time, and a lot of fuel in trips to the newsstand if you drive, and always make sure you recycle your newspaper when you’re done.



Magazines are an impulse buy for many people including myself on occasion, but if you find yourself buying the same magazine a few issues in a row consider taking out a subscription. More than 50% of magazines on newsstands are never sold and end up hauled off to landfills or recycled which is really a waste of time and energy. If more people subscribed stores would order less magazines. A lot of magazines also have online versions which often have more information than the physical magazine and less annoying advertisements. If you don’t like the online option try your local library, they usually have a great selection of current and past issues. If you buy magazines you could also consider donating them to the library when you’re done or to local schools for crafts projects just make sure any with adult content don’t make it into art class that could get awkward.



A lot of puzzle books contain a variety of different games that some people never end up using and even if they contain only one type of puzzle it is rare for a person to finish all the games in a book. Once the book is finished with it is tossed out and can’t be reused by someone else. The best way to avoid this is to find your puzzles online and either complete them there or print off only the ones you want and take them with you to finish. This could end up saving a lot of paper and time in the end.



The printing press was truly one of our most useful inventions and led to the opening up of education for a lot more people than was previously possible, leading to very rapid progress and innovation all over the world. However we live in a world today where information is spread and shared like a virus because of the internet and a lot of what we print on paper can be found online instead. It is easier to access, requires no disposal, costs little to nothing, and less resources are used in the process