Caught red-handed in the recyling bin
June 16, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Green Journal , trackback
When it comes to “artwork” created by kids, the adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” unquestionably applies – when I see chicken scratches, my kids see flowers and clouds; when I see random squiggles, they see dolphins and anemones.
They don’t think twice before taking my new crisp printing paper and doodle a sheet a minute –artwork by quantity obviously. Naturally it is incumbent upon me to find them less wasteful alternatives.
By day, I am a business consultant – yeah, like a client calls me and tells me that they have a new widget that requires a price. I do this and that and eventually stick a number like $1294.3 in a fancy deck of slides. In any case, over the past couple of years I have quite a few different clients with various lines of business and diverse sizes. However one thing all of the companies have in common – too many people too readily hit the PRINT button.
Oops, I didn’t mean to hit the print button for a 124 page document. Oh well. Into the garbage can the paper goes.
I may need to review the slide deck with 10 people. I better print out 15 copies just in case. Oops only 5 people showed up. Oh well, that’s too bad. At least we have a recycling bin.
I see this all the time. It is estimated that every year an average US office employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper - that’s 30 pages a day. If I actually conducted a systematic research, I’d venture to say that 90% of the print outs are necessary. Paper is too cheap, there is little incentive for companies to encourage their employees to print less.
Here I am again, going off on a tangent. The point is that I paper-dive on the weekly bases just to get my children their paper supply, sometimes in the recycling bin and sometimes in the trash.
Every so often, I get caught with hands still in the cookie jar. “We are obviously not paying you enough,” some clients would joke. Sure, I am always happy to get paid more. I do get frustrated in that as a consultant I work on very specific projects. Reducing paper printouts for a company has never been and will not likely to be in my project pipeline. I have casually suggested setting some sort of quota for printouts by person or by departments. But as long as the paper price stays at its current level, my suggestion will never be taken seriously.
Anyway I haul the paper home and cut it in half. Now my girls can churn out 20 pieces of “artwork” a day without me constantly saying, “that’s enough. No more paper!” or “Just draw on the same one you just did.”
Then I secretively recycle almost all of their “artwork”, though occasionally they do catch me red-handed in the process of putting paper in our recycling bin.
Now that I have a fairly constant source of used paper, my next goal is to convince the teachers at my kids’ school to use it and then recycle it.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Comments»
I don’t think my kids realize that paper can come with nothing on the back of it. My 4 yr old has actually handed me back a blank piece saying, “This got in the art pile by mistake.” I, however, do not need to bin dive. His preK teacher sends home at least a sheet per day…and usually more. And repeats messages. And never prints on both sides of the paper. Oh and listen to this one, I just found out from my sister-in-laws, both of whom teach on LI, that most LI schools do not recycle at all because it is too much of a hassle. How outrageous is that?
The coveted art paper at our house used to be the colored paperstock samples from the printing reps my husband dealt with. The kids were sooo excited when that stuff came home!
Doh! I get caught with art work in the recycle bin all the times. Our kids would get a long - mine churn out art work at the same pace. We get random pieces of paper, like Needle, but the kids tear through that no problem.
Great idea. I’ll have the hubby bring some paper home from his work.
Orgie: your boys are so cute! When they are older, they will realize what their mom has done to them! a life long habit of not wasting paper. Hooray. Rejecting recycling in school is so very sad. Seems like the teachers are missing an opportunity to teach kids the cycle of paper making. Driven by No Child Left Behind policy?
Joyce: wow colored paper! Lucky kids. I’d be excited to have colored paper myself, I’d hog it all and my kids would never see it.
GB: Glad to know that art work by quantity is a thing for all kids not just mine. Look mommy, it’s a dragon. Sure whatever. Look mommy, I just made a house and a garden. Wow, it only took you 3 seconds. They make my head spin.
I don’t blame the teachers, but the town. They said the school stopped doing it because the town won’t come get it often enough. Some teachers, like my one sister-in-law, have the kids reuse as much as possible and then bring home as much as they can to their own recycling pick up. Just not a town priority.
Orgie: Jumping up and down too soon. My bad. Sorry teachers. Shape up town!
I grew up drawing fine works of art on paper with high school physics worksheets on the back. I would read them sometimes, but I could never understand them!
Donna: That was so cute that you actually tried to read the physics worksheets. Perhaps you did get something out of it through contant exposure
Oh man, this was such a sore point with me at a previous job. Because one particular boss was incredibly disorganized and indecisive, HUGE amounts of paper got wasted. Her staff would redo entire manuals and materials needed for about two dozen temp staff. Then the boss would decide on a minor procedural change, meaning it all had to be redone and printed. This happened at least a dozen times. It drove me bonkers that they would not consider waiting to print everything until it was absolutely finalized.