Teachers Pledge to Go Paperless for Earth Day

Steve Katz is spearheading a green movement to get teachers, administrators, students and parents to pledge to go paperless for one day on April 22, 2010, Earth Day. This year Earth Day will be celebrating its 40th year of promoting awareness of protecting the Earth's environment. With all the digital technology we have at our fingertips, this innovative paperless approach is the way of the future for teachers and classrooms. And considering the amount of waste the typical American goes through in a day, the digital approach is kinder to the environment and makes going paperless easy.

Consider these facts about everyday paper waste provided by the Clean Air Council:

Americans create almost 400 billion photocopies a year which equals about 750,000 copies every minute, every day. Teachers are big contributors to this number.

Americans receive almost four million tons of junk mail every year. Most of it is tossed and ends up in landfills.

The average American generates over four pounds of trash each day and up to 56 tons of trash per year.

The average American uses 650 pounds of paper a year. On top of that, Americans dispose of enough office paper to construct a 12-foot wall stretching from Los Angeles to New York City. And that's just the beginning.

As you can see, the amount of paper used by each American adds up to an astronomical amount. Schools and teachers typically use an overabundance of paper: homework sheets, instructions, testing materials, parent information, and the list goes on and on. Recycling is great but reducing the amount of paper we use in our normal daily lives goes farther to help protect the environment.

Besides being kinder to the environment, going paperless is kinder on your bottom line. Schools spend a considerable amount of money on paper, toner, monthly service contracts on high tech photo copy machines, and other office supplies. By eliminating the need to print out specific information, teachers and schools will save a substantial amount of money. Informational printouts can be made into PDFs and placed online for parents to access. Same goes for homework instructions, study guides, classroom newsletters, and other similar items. Parents are becoming more tech savvy, making the transition to a paperless school environment more acceptable. These are just the first steps teachers and schools can take to create a paperless classroom environment.

Take a step in the right direction to go paperless by starting with one day. This Earth Day make the pledge to teach paperless. Currently over 575 teachers worldwide have pledged to go paperless with that number increasing each day. Why not add your name to the list.

Sources:
http://cdspd.wikispaces.com/Paperless
www.teachpaperless.com
http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html