Warm-up Activity Paper Consumption

• The results of my energy conservation project, Warm-up Activity Paper Consumption in the Annette Island School District, were incredibly surprising. What I learned through this activity is that my class can make a significant impact on the amount of paper we as a district are using if I provide previously used paper for the assignment. However, the surprising fact is that if all the teachers that start their classes with a warm-up activity adopt this strategy, over the course of a year we could save 59,584 sheets of paper. This is of course assuming the kids will use the previously used paper provided by the teacher. It is ridiculous but my kids, the same ones who complained about my destroying the environment with the assignment, are now often too lazy to stand up and grab a sheet of paper.
  
• The other interesting facts I discovered in completing this project are that most of the trees used to make paper come from environmentally sensitive areas, not areas that were planted for such purposes. I always assumed that since paper was so disposable, the trees harvested to make paper were sustainable. Apparently this is much more of a problem than I ever realized. This is such a problem that the Palo Alto Research Group and Xerox have teamed up to make a printer that uses disappearing ink. After 18 hours the ink would disappear and the same sheet of paper could be used multiple times.
  
• To see my powerpoint regarding this project please visit this link.
• To see my spreadsheets regarding this project please visit this link.