Senseless Waste

I'm not an extremist about anything really, but I do try to be as environmentally responsible as I possibly can. One of my major "hang-ups" is wasting paper or having everything printed out on paper. And this is a major reason for this blog - an attempt to minimize waste.

In a Direct Sales business, especially the one I'm in, I have catalogs, lots of flyers, FAQs, Tips, Font Lists, etc. An absolute TON of documents to be printed out. To waste such a high volume of paper and printer ink to disseminate information and sales flyers drives me absolutely bananas. The sales are temporary, new catalogs come out and then you have new updated Order Forms, Invitations, etc., etc. These are all necessary I know, but why not try to reduce the volume of paper going into the landfill and save money at the same time?

About a year ago, I gave one of our beautiful catalogs to my Dentist's office. And gave him an adorable expression for his office - "You don't have to brush all your teeth, just the ones you want to keep!". Since all the girls in the office were interested in looking at the catalog, I left it there. About a month later at another appointment, I asked if they had finished looking through the catalog & if they had any questions. Then the lady at the front desk told me that she had thrown out the catalog!! I was so shocked! For one, Uppercase Living catalogs are so beautiful - how could you even think of throwing it away, and it was a current catalog! To me this was like a slap in the face and was such a senseless waste! After that, I ended up finding another Dentist!

In an effort to cut down on senseless waste, I have documents and flyers posted here that would normally be printed out. This is why I love Scribd so much. You can "show" documents without wasting paper. And if someone wants to print the documents, they can do that too. It's at least an attempt to reduce waste.

I wish Direct Sales companies and retail businesses would be more conscious about this and make more of an effort to reduce waste. The catalog needs to be seen on the web in such a way that a person can "flip through" the pages like you can do with scribd documents. This is just a common sense way to deal with the paper volume and save money at the same time.