Going Mostly Paperless

One significant way to care for creation is to go mostly paperless. Adopting paperless lifestyle changes, to the extent one can, is a process. I suggest adopting one practice at a time until one’s daily life includes little to no paper use. Here are some ways to reduce one’s paper consumption:

• Reduce junk mail.

• To remove one’s self from mailing lists used by “creditors or insurers to make firm offers of credit or insurance that are not initiated by you,” from the companies Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion, go to optoutprescreen.com. From the site, you can choose to opt-out of receiving offers for five years (requires electronic form), opt-out from receiving offers permanently (requires mailing a form), or opt-in if you decide in the future that you want to receive offers again. What you’ll need to provide to opt-out: your name, address, Social Security Number, and date of birth.

• Additionally, go to catalogchoice.org to “opt out of catalogs, coupons, credit card offers, phone books, circulars, and more” for free.3 To make best use of this service, save the back page of catalogs that you receive. The back page usually has a key or customer code printed on it that you will need in order to opt-out of the mailing list. In some cases you will need to make a phone call to opt-out. The site gives you the necessary information. The catalogchoice.org site says that its users have saved the following by opting out of junk mail (as of Nov 20, 2011):
• 726,365 fully grown trees
• 302,518,422 pounds of greenhouse gas
• 107,238,746 pounds of solid waste
• 728,567,964 gallons of water

• Another similar site that empowers you to opt-out of “Credit Offers, Catalogs, Magazine Offers and Other Mail Offers” is dmachoice.org.

• Pay bills online through your bank (usually a free service). Initial set-up takes some time, because one has to enter all relevant account information. However, once set-up, online bill paying is convenient and reduces paper and postage.

• Sign up to receive paperless statements and account notifications via email.

• Bonus tip #1: Create an email label or folder called “To Pay” so that as you are e-mailed statement notifications you can put all bills needing payment in one paperless place.

• Bonus tip #2: Add a weekly calendar reminder to yourself to pay bills as applicable so that your paperless bills are not “out of sight, out of mind.”

• Move most of your filing system online. Free services are available through Google Documents or Dropbox. For tips on creating a secure password, read this article.

• For the files that must remain in paper form, such as your birth certificate, keep your files labeled, neat, and confined to a small area.

• Create PDFs instead of printing receipts from online purchases or printing paperless statements to file them. Save them instead on your hard drive or in an online folder through a free service like Google Documents or Dropbox.

• When you need paper products, buy recycled paper products as much as possible.

• Try to live without a printer at home. If you need to print or scan documents, go to a library or business to use printer or scanner services.

• If you must print, print double-sided on recycled paper.

• Recycle or shred all unwanted mail. You can add shredded paper to your compost pile.

• Reconsider your magazine subscriptions. Many magazines are available through your local library or online. If you do continue receiving a magazine, plan to share it with a friend after you’ve read it. Or you can tear out the pages that feature items you want to keep. Then scan those pages, create PDFs to file online or on your hard drive, and recycle the magazine and torn out pages.

• Replace paper towels with cloth towels. For example, you can buy a set of 12 Birdseye cotton fabric cloth towels through Etsy-vendor, madeintheredbarn, for $12.00. (I have them and love them. And, no, madeintheredbarn didn’t ask or pay me to promote its wares. I’m just excited to share what has worked for me.) You can use the cloth towels, then toss them in a bucket under the kitchen sink and launder them when the bucket gets full.

• Replace paper napkins with cloth napkins.

• If you want to take on an extra challenge, use washable cloths instead of toilet paper. The dedication required is like that of using cloth diapers, but for adults. To be hospitable to guests in your home, you can make toilet paper available.

What on this list seems most do-able to you? Do you have suggestions or tips to add? What has worked for you? Don’t be shy…Photo Credit: The photo above, “Paper Weaving,” is © 2007  FeatheredTar, and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

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