APRIL 16, 2006
I
like business cards because they indicate immediately a person's name and a point of contact. Throughout my life there have been hundreds of interesting people who have passed my way but I have not been able to get to know them because of lack of information. Today, search engines can help you find anyone, or almost anyone.
Type in your own name on one of the popular search engines and you may discover the world knows more about you than you do. Technology was supposed to be a resource and a way of using less paper; hence fewer business cards. Statistics are indicating that we are using more paper than ever because a computer, printer, and the gadgets of the day are creating more of us spending time at the keyboard.
The internet and the computer are addicting and the flow, or output from each desk has increased the amount of paper used, wasted, recycled, and purchased. We even make some of our own business cards from recycled paper. We try and use both sides of the recycled paper we buy, but still the volume of paper seems to increase in our office and my personal recycled bin is filled weekly.
Granted most of the office paper is generated by junk mail and 'spam' faxes that come in selling everything from new phones to new vacation spots in far off places.
In Aesop's' fables there is always a moral to the story. What is it here?
I guess to be wasteful with a single piece of paper may indicate how wasteful we have become in our culture in general. All of us, even the ardent ascetic environmentalist is guilty of wasting paper, but with awareness comes knowledge and the accumulated knowledge may bring wisdom one day. Start with your business cards and ask that they be printed on recycled paper. Perhaps that simple gesture may tell others a great deal about your emerging environmental ethic.
Buying recycled paper is not difficult. The power of discernment followed by action can be realized at any of the super office supply stores and now even in small stationary stores. If there is no recycled paper ask for it. Buying recycled may not save the world, but it may save a tree and that tree is worth saving.
--Peter