Thursday, April 19, 2007

More Dumpster Diving....


Debt Regret recently posted about recycling unused items from work (read here). It made me think of my own version of dumpster diving. Like Debt Regret, I see a lot of waste at my office, mostly in the form of computer paper. My department goes through many reams of paper a day and I started saving mine in a desk drawer, and when the drawer was full, I'd put it in a paper bag and take it home to re-feed through my laser printer using the back side. We hardly ever print out official documents, mostly mapquests, receipts and e-mails, so to us it doesn't matter what's on the back. A couple of times co-workers have asked me what I was doing with it, and then thought it was a good idea, but I've never seen anyone else take used paper home. If we get too much, we just recycle it. I know I should organize at least a department-wide recycling program, but I'm not sure how management would react -- maybe they wouldn't even care. Plus, naturally lazy person that I am, I'm not sure I want to drag bags of paper home all the time. They would probably pile up in my car before I ever took them to recyle, and when I stopped at a light I would truly look like a bag lady (albeit with a car).

2 comments:

AllisonF said...

hee hee, this is so Hints from Heloise.

But I do the exact same thing.

Anonymous said...

You might want to check this link http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=brrc/RecyclingGuide.asp#hauling it's about starting an office recycling program. Thankfully, the ice packs and plastic bins are the biggest issue at my work place. We have a recycling program and recycle the normal things - paper, plastic, cans, etc and they are picked up every day. I think it's great what you are doing with the paper. I order 50 reams of paper for my area every week, I couldn't imagine not recycling it in some form or another!