Imagine: university life without paper.No more college-ruled, plain white or sticky yellow Post-it notes. No more red marks across mid-term papers. No more little blue books or Scantron sheets.

ETSU students consume hundreds of pounds of paper products every week, yet may be unaware of the fiscal and environmental repercussions.

“The largest paper user on campus is the student computer labs,” said Karen King, who chaired the Committee for Online Document Management last summer. “They are our heaviest printers.”

In July, the Office of Information Technology – which oversees computer labs on campus – ordered more than 250 cartons of paper from Central Receiving. With each carton weighing 50 pounds and containing 5,000 sheets of paper, students are going through 12,500 pounds of paper – or 1.25 million sheets – each year.

However, specific numbers for paper consumption and recycling are difficult to nail down because a paper audit of ETSU has never been conducted.

Initial research done by the document-management committee confirms that student labs, like the lab on the first floor of the D. P. Culp Center, use the most paper on campus. The second largest user is the Institutional Review Board, or IRB, a group that keeps records of research on campus. However, the IRB will soon be making the switch to a digital format.

Faced with the dual tasks of reducing cost and “going green,” the rest of the university could follow the “paperless” path. The committee made 12 recommendations to the Budget Reduction Task Force about ways the university could cut paper consumption and reduce costs.

King said she believes the university could one day be free of its dependence on paper.

“It’s going to happen,” she said. “It’s happening. I think it will be most cost effective, and I think it will be more friendly to the environment.”

However, most students, faculty and staff may not know how dependent they are on paper products – or how that dependence harms the environment.

Micky Morton, a teacher with the College of Education and chair of the Green Fee Committee, was shocked at the numbers in King’s report concerning paper consumption at ETSU.

“We stared at the report for an entire meeting one time,” Morton said. “We couldn’t believe how much paper was used.”

When Morton was a student, the university had double-sided printing as the default setting on campus printers. In recent years, the switch was made to one-sided printing. A number of printers on campus do not even have the option to print double-sided, Morton said.

“Everything is available on computers,” Morton said. “In our world, it is so achievable to be paperless.”

By 2010, Anaheim University in Anaheim, Calif. could be the world’s first paperless university. The university, which pioneered the online degree program, has pushed publishers to produce e-books that could be viewed on the Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle. Anaheim students have been submitting assignments electronically, and have accessed online library resources, since 1998.

“It is our goal to be one of many paperless universities and we hope by setting an example, many universities around the world will join us in becoming sustainable and socially responsible institutions that put people and planet before profit,” AU spokesman David Bracey said in a news release.

While saving money is an important factor in going paperless, the environmental impact of paper is a tremendous driving force.

According to the Environmental Paper Network’s 2007 report “The State of the Paper Industry” (www.environmentalpaper.org), the paper that Americans consume daily – and then disregard – has a devastating impact on the environment.

According to the report, “Every phase of paper’s lifecycle contributes to global warming, from harvesting trees to production of pulp and paper to eventual disposal.”

When paper goes to the landfill, rather being recycled, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide. The study estimates that more than one-third of municipal solid waste is paper, and municipal landfills account for 34 percent of human-related methane emissions to the atmosphere.

According to the EPN, if the United States cuts its office paper use by 10 percent – or by 540,000 tons – greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 1.6 million tons. It’s the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.

As of August, this year ETSU has sent 448 tons of materials to the landfill and has recycled 110 tons of materials, according to Director of Landscape and Grounds Kathleen Moore.

Of those recycled materials, 67 tons — 61 percent of the materials – were classified as “mixed paper.” The university also recycled nearly 17 tons of cardboard.

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