• EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
  • EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time

EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time

EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time

By Dr. Keith Martin

April 22nd 2009

If you sit in an MP’s office for a day, you can’t help but be struck by the massive volume of bills, reports and sundry other documents that enter the “inbox”. The vast majority of these were never asked for and will never be read, as they are readily available online, and wind up in the recycling box. This is an outright waste of money and trees and represents an utterly unnecessary cost to the environment. It continues to occur simply out of neglect. So on Earth Day, why doesn’t Parliament take the lead and introduce a process to reduce the unnecessary printing of government documents? In doing this, Parliamentarians will save tax payer’s money, conserve paper and reduce our environmental footprint.

With the ready availability of most publications online, offices can choose to print what they need. A typical MP’s office receives at least 4000 sheets of paper per week, the amount of paper derived from ½ a tree. Over the year this amounts to approximately 26 trees per MP. Multiply this by the more that 400 MPs’ and Senators’ offices in Ottawa and this represents more than 10,000 trees a year cut down unnecessarily.

By leading a more paperless institution, Parliament will be setting an example for other federal government departments, provincial legislatures, municipal governments and the private sector to follow.

Earth Day is this week. It will be a wonderful legacy if Parliament began this process. Trees will be saved, our carbon sinks increased and our environment will become healthier

See the CBC blog on Keith’s Earth Day Initiative at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/politicalbytes/2009/04/earth_day_motion.html

 

 

 

 

 

EARTH DAY: Let’s Green the Hill, One Sheet of Paper at a Time
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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