I spent two hours shredding this afternoon. Pink pages. I can't put them, as is, into the blue box. They are "confidential"
I can't shed my inhibitions about waste. I look at a pile of pages and I see dollar signs going down the tube. Machines, power, dictation, the cost of paper, space, ink cartridges, collating, stapling manpower.
Everything copied more than thirty times.
When I started school,we printed and drew on a slate with a slate pencil. Sponges sat cloudy water in a jam jar on the classroom window sill. Slate pencils came packed in little wooden boxes with a sliding lid. The pencils were packed in cedar shavings. When a new box was opened the classroom filled with the smell of cedar that lingers on in my memory..
When my children were in school, there was paper everywhere in the house. And always the feeling their drawings and work should be saved..
Now it's Council papers. The pile just keeps growing and I still feel guilty about discarding stuff that represents such a pile of dollars for what seems like such an insufficient purpose.
When Bill Hogg was on Council,he proposed cutting down on paper and making better use of the internet . I was probably not supportive. I like holding what I'm reading in my hand.
Since then, I've stopped taking a daily newspaper.I can read it on line. But I don't. Yesterday, the Toronto Star was dropped off. I quite enjoyed reading it. But I don't want to start again. I read a lot more when I was getting it every day but if I missed reading it for a day or two, I felt guilty about having it, paying for it and not having time to read it.
On line. I can pick the headlines I want to follow. But I don't pick many.
I really think we should be looking for ways to cut down on the paper we use at the Town Hall. The agenda is published on the town's web site. We each have monitors at our place. at the table. What we choose for debate, we can read on the monitor.
But I can't help feeling more secure with paper.
It must just be the habit. Maybe we need to wean ourselves . Take baby steps. Maybe try one meeeting a month without paper.
Maybe we could discover new ways of using the internet. Maybe new programs could be designed that don't even exist right now. .Better than anything we can imagine.
Nothing would surprise me.
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3 comments:
with this last bunch gone down the tube Ev the paper mill should be churning out less than half of what it has for the last 7 years , If you looked through your stack I'm sure you can easily find numerous trees killed on needless duplicate reports , that were submitted over and over again , The Petch House comes to mind, This appears to be yet another potential win for the Town ,The new Council may very well save a whole forest this Term
Even with internet and digital technologies, we have to still hang on to paper. The laws and regulations regarding the retention of important documents have not kept up with the technologies available. For example, a friend was recently audited by CRA for 2 tax years that were a couple of years ago. He had to provide invoices, receipts, proofs of payment, etc from 2007 and 2008. What would this person do if he had used such paper-saving devices as ePost? As it was he used online banking wich does not provide traditional receipts or proofs of payment - he could have easily doctored up the web page "transaction log" from the bank. So, the paper is still a requirement.
Regarding Town documents. As you say, the agendas are alerady on the web site. If it is a question of book-marking certain sections for discussion maybe the Town should look at something like an eBook reader for the councillors. The PDF file can be loaded on the reader, the user can set bookmarks and use a legal pad of paper to make notes. Depending on budgets, you could employ a tablet PC or iPad technology as well to do it all paperless.
Fuimus
I think that the problem with town documents is that you need an electronic message to ensure that all the "pink pages" have been destroyed.
I've been in meetings where people have blatantly refused to hand in pink pages at the end of the meeting. That is a waste of town resources.
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