By Steven Witkin ’16

Recently, global resource sustainability has evolved from a casual consideration to an urgently relevant issue, spawning government agencies and studies dedicated to finding out how to delay the exhaustion of resources. There have been numerous efforts to reduce resource consumption, yet most of these developments and attitudes have not reached schools, especially involving the consumption of paper. The amount of paper that teachers print in a year is enormous. An average student’s binder fills up each quarter. Sherwood consumes over 4 million sheets a year, not including test booklets. Every week, students receive papers that could have been class sets and packets that could have been double-sided. Many students just take a few notes and recycle them. Promethean Boards were supposed to slow the constant flow of handouts, yet many teachers still print out unnecessary copies of Power Points and sheets that need only be accessible on Edline. Unless the school switches to electronic distribution perhaps involving tablets, teachers and students need to become conscious of the paper they use, because every sheet adds up.