Change the margins

From the “it’s the little things that matter” department – I just saw changethemargins.com written up in the January/February issue of World Ark, a newsletter published by Heifer International. The idea is simple:

What if you could get companies to adopt narrower margins as their printing standard? It would result in a lot less paper consumption. Which of course means saving a lot of trees and cutting down on a lot of waste…but only if a massive amount of people changed their margins.

Not only would this save trees, it would save the energy and pollution associated with the entire paper-making and recycling industry.

Now, I’ve been finding myself turning into a whitespace kind of person. Less clutter, more visual appeal. But I’m willing to take the challenge to trim the fat, as it were, in the future.

This should also inspire us to look at the other places where we can make a small, seemingly insignificant difference. If enough people do it, it starts to add up.

Side note: Almost two years ago, I wrote about “going green” in my computing environment to save money. I’m happy to say that I’ve managed to save a noticeable amount on my electricity bill, and thus my carbon footprint. It’s sometimes a bit hard to tell, with kids coming home from college, changing weather patterns, etc. but electricity use in our house is trending down.