By Tamara Krinsky, www.changethemargins.com

I've always tried to save paper.
Not because I was an environmental revolutionary. 
But because I was poor.
 
An aspiring actress and writer, money was tight as I was starting out my career. When I found myself going through reams of paper on a regular basis as I was printing out drafts of articles and audition scripts, one of the ways I realized I could save some cash was by making my margins as narrow as possible.

Narrower margin settings = more text/page = less paper used = fewer $$ on my credit card at Office Depot.  I know that to most people, saving a sheet of paper here and there may not seem like a big financial windfall, but when a single paycheck stands between making rent at the end of the month and getting an eviction notice, you do whatever it takes!   Luckily, as my career has progressed, I'm now more financially stable, but my paper-saving habits have stuck with me.

Several weeks ago, I was doing research for an environmental documentary, so Green issues were constantly present in my mind. As I was doing my usual margin-changin' thang while printing out a document for my boss, a light bulb went off in my brain. What if you could get people to adopt changing paper margins on a large scale? What if you could get companies to adopt narrower margins as their printing standard? It would result in a lot less paper consumption. Which of course means saving a lot of trees and cutting down on a lot of waste...but only if a massive amount of people changed their margins.
 
It's not a new idea. It's not complicated. But if we all did it, it just might work.
 
Stats: Paper & the Environment
Here are some general stats I've come across in my research about paper usage and the environment. As I come across additional facts and figures, I’ll post them on my website.  But for now, alarm yourselves with these lovely numbers...

In prehistoric times, 60% of the earth's surface was covered by forests - today that amount has been reduced by 30% and is still shrinking.

It takes 17 pulpwood market-sized trees and 390 gallons of oil to make a ton of paper

That ton of paper, when disposed of, takes up nearly 8 cubic feet of public landfill space.

That public landfill is approximately 36% waste paper products.

Each one million pages of paper not printed saves 85 pulp trees.
 
Each person in an office on average uses 2.5 pounds of paper each week. In the U.S., a ton = 2000 pounds, so that means every 2 years and 70 days, each person in an office on average uses a ton of paper. Now re-read the stats above and see how those numbers hit you. Suddenly, a ton doesn't seem like such an abstract number.
 
Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every year -- enough to build a 12-foot high wall of paper from New York to California.
 
Save money by going green!
In October 2001, a research team of the Penn State Green Destiny Council released a report on the ecological analysis of Mueller Laboratory, a biology building on the Penn State University Park campus. "Mueller Policy Paper #1: Reduce Standard Margin Settings", derived from the report, showed how PSU could save 72 acres of forest and over $120,000 per year by reducing the default margin settings campus-wide.
 
I was very happy to see this proof that small changes = big savings. Because let's get real...while I'm sure there are indeed a few individuals at large institutions and corporations who truly care about ecological issues, there are a heck of a lot MORE people who care about cold hard cash. Plus, since the report was issued in 2001, I'm only imagining that the savings have gone up as costs have risen.
 
Penn State presented some simple ways to dramatically reduce paper usage, including margin changing and other measures, that are summarized in the following chart:
From                                       To                             (Penn State, 20).
12 point font                        10 point font
1.25" margins                     .75" margins
double spaced                    single spaced
one sided                            double sided
100 page document         15 page document
  
How to change your margins
Until we can get Microsoft to change the default margins, here's how to do it on your own.  It should take no more than twenty seconds and just a few clicks of the mouse.

On your WORD screen, go to FILE, then PAGE SET UP. Once on PAGE SET UP, click the DEFAULT key, and you'll be offered "Do you want to change the default settings for the page set up? This change will affect all new documents based on the normal template."
 
Then set your margins to whatever preferred new width you'd like.  I'm suggesting setting each margin to .75" which will save an immense amount of paper.  Thanks for doing this!   And I was right, huh?   Twenty seconds or so?   Not bad...