Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Paper-less, not paperless

show me the way
I throw away a lot of stuff periodically. Remove clutter. Simplify my life. Make room for something else.

Tonight is one of those times. Although the "stuff" is mainly just paper. It's such a waste sometimes, for people and companies alike to print so much paper. I'm constantly contradicting myself, because I'm the culprit who prints almost every other day. It takes a huge effort and a big awareness on our part to limit ourselves from printing so much paper that we probably won't read or need later.

I'm not saying we should eliminate paper altogether. Imagine the paperless world, everyone will be constantly carrying around some sort of electronic media reader and you'll be lucky to find people who have that rare 20/20 vision. I suppose 99% of the population would agree that nothing beats reading from a book, the paper-in-your-hands feel is unsurpassable. Information that can be contained in a physical medium is more reliable and easily accessible I suppose.

Yeah, recycling maybe the solution. Let me know if you know any good methods to dispose of electronics, plastic bottles, newspapers, magazines, books responsibly in Singapore. Been wanting to find out but I guess I stopped short on being proactive about it.

It would be nice if:
- Banks would just stop sending confirmation letters or monthly statements. With every statement comes an envelope and for bills, more marketing brochure and a return envelope!
- All bills could come in as email attachments (though I notice many companies have offered this option to their customers). Yeah, 1,000,000 companies to follow suit.
- Marketing pamphlets could be limited. I throw those away every time I find them in my mailbox.

Here are some good practices that have been around for a while:
- People who carry their own mug to work or environment-friendly water bottles to travel instead of buying readily available plastic water bottles every time. Sigg water bottle is a good example.
- Companies who carry water dispensers instead of water bottles.
- Plastic cups that were replaced with recyclable paper cups.
- I went to Ikea the other day and found out they are now charging customers for plastic carrier bags. It was a first for me but I suppose it makes sense! Supermarkets should start implementing this. You won't believe how many people would carry their own shopping bags to save 10 cents.

I'll post again if I find out more...

4 comments:

Kiran said...

What if one day, all we need to do is to buy these blank notebooks. When you go buy a book, you give them this notebook .. and POOF! they will print the book on your notebook. The next time you buy a book, you bring back the same notebook and POOF! they erase what's on there and print the new book on your notebook again.

Sri said...

That's a thought. Need to think of a way to manage the queue yeah? Still I can't help but think "What if I need to refer to the book another time?" Haha.

dodol said...

i thought, charge-free plastic bags are only available in countries like indonesia while people in developed countries are used to take their own shopping bag with them everytime they go shopping. turns out i was wrong.

Sri said...

Yeah Simon.. Not sure about the rest of the developed countries, but here it's catching up...I know in Denmark they do...Maybe you've become accustomed to seeing that practice? :)