Posted by T.W. Anderson on Jun.23, 2009

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Everyone has heard of “going paperless”. It’s the new trend. It’s up there with “carbon foot-print”, “going green”, and all the trendy little words that get thrown around when people want to sound hip when it comes to discussing environmentally-friendly concepts. But what does it really mean? How can you be sure that you are really going paperless?

Traditionally, paper has been a central focus for humanity for centuries. The printing press is argued to be the single most important invention in the history of the human race, and all because of the written word. Everything we do revolves around paper and words, in one form or another. At least, that was the case traditionally. We are in the 21st century now, and with new power comes new responsibilities.

It isn’t just just about global warming, the deforestation of massive areas of rain-forests, or consumption. It’s about taking charge of your life and dictating how many resources you actually use. Think of how much paper is wasted, every day, simply because people refuse to transition away from traditional.

People fear change. It’s natural. We fear that which we do not understand. And for many people there is this underlying fear that if they give up paper, if they go completely paperless, that they are somehow giving up their freedom, that they are reliant upon the digital age, upon technology. But is that a bad thing?

E-mail has almost completely replaced the need for written correspondence between individuals, world-wide. Parcel post is really only necessary for just that…parcels. Even magazines, which have traditionally been one of the most wasteful sources of paper, have begun to transfer over to the digital world. Many of the major magazines now offer paperless versions for Kindle, or whatever your favorite reader happens to be. E-books are rapidly becoming more and more popular as well.

Going paperless is a lot easier than most people think. You can literally go weeks, if not months, without receiving a single piece of physical mail once you have made the transition. And it’s easy to get started. Start off with something small. Have a credit card? Get your statements via e-mail. Bank statements? Check your e-mail! Cable bill? E-mail. Recipe box? Old-fashioned! You don’t need a shoe-box anymore to store all those family recipes, and you sure as heck don’t need a dozen clunky old cook-books cluttering up the shelves. Store them in a file, put them on a flash drive, or save them to your Blackberry, iPhone, your Kindle or whatever your hand-held device preference is!

Cooking becomes a breeze when you don’t have to worry about wrinkled, old notes that were half-scribbled by one of your ancestors. Gone are the days when you needed to plop a 5 lb. cook-book onto the table or counter-top, taking up two feet of space that could otherwise have been used for a prep area. Once you have gone digital and everything is on your hand-held device it’s as simple as pulling up the file.

Paperless also means reducing your wastefulness. When the cashier at the grocery store asks you if you want paper or plastic, you can decline both, because you brought your own. Cloth or woven hemp bags are perfect for grocery shopping, because they eliminate the need to use those wasteful bags that the grocery store offers to have you use.

Magazines are by far the hardest item to transition out of purchasing on a regular basis. But when you get right down to it, magazines are horribly wasteful in that they are designed to be tossable. When you purchase a book, that book is going to last a lifetime. You might even give it to your friends, or family members. But magazines are meant to be read and then disposed of. You might save some clippings, or an article or two that you take out, but most people simply toss magazines when they are done reading them. And while you can recycle them, why not avoid the process entirely, and simply get the downloadable version?

While there are some tasks that cannot help but use paper, or any of the numerous byproducts, the choices you make in your day-to-day life can greatly impact the overall destruction of the trees on our planet. Deforestation is a major issue in the overall scheme of protecting our environment, and every single person counts when it comes to making a difference. Start small, but start now. Make the transition to paperless, and help make this planet a greener place, one (less!) page at a time.

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Posted under Eco-Friendly Ideas, Living.