Ways to make your printing more eco-friendly

You may be good at avoiding unnecessary printing, but sometimes you may want or have to print documents.  Here are several tips we’ve compiled to help you print in a more eco-friendly manner:

Smarter Ways to Print:

Doesn’t it bother you when you print a web page and after it’s too late, you realize that you printed all the ads, headers, and several other things on the web page that unnecessarily uses up ink and paper.  Here are a few tips to help you avoid this:

> Before you print it, click “Preview” to see if you can avoid printing some pages.

> If you want to print an article from a website, look for a link that says “Printer Friendly” or something similar.  Using this option will likely eliminate printing ads and other things that you do not intend to print.

> HP came up with a really cool plugin that can help you customize and select areas of websites to print.  My favorite feature is that it allows you to combine areas of different webpages, so you can have a concise printout from different sources of only the info you want.

> Instead of the HP plugin, you can try GreenPrint, which can help you identify and avoid printing unwanted pages.  In particular, I really like the built-in feature that keeps track of how many pages you did not print and how much money you saved.

The Eco-Friendly Font:

Who would have thought that there would be an “eco-friendly font”?  It’s true… it’s called the “EcoFont”.  Essentially, if you zoomed on the letters, you will see little “holes” and subsequently less ink is used when printing documents.  Check it out and download the EcoFont.  There is a professional and a free version of the EcoFont.  It is a great way to help you save on ink.

Printer Settings

You can adjust the printer settings under “Properties” to print in lower quality (or “Draft” mode) which will use less ink.  At the same time, the quality is not compromised significantly, so this could be an ideal choice for daily printing needs.

The Paper

Here is a simple one:  use paper made from recycled material

The Ink Cartridge

In a previous post, we talked about the benefits of recycling printer cartridges – the benefits both to the environment and to your wallet!  Instead of tossing an ink cartridge after it’s empty, you can refill or recycle it through services like Cartridge World (on their website, you can enter your zip code, and you will get a list of Cartridge World locations in your area).  Recycling/Reusing an ink cartridge will cost you a fraction of the price of a new cartridge.

We hope that one or a combination of the methods described above can help you get started to make your printing habits a little more eco-friendly, which utlimately will save you money by reducing usage of ink and paper.

Return to A Green Arizona Blog home                               May 12th, 2009