Clicking, at Last, on 'Don't Print'
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.20.08
fake picture of a "green office." Who has a real rolodex anymore?
Lisa Belkin of the New York Times just started to try to go paper free. "Until last week I collected interview notes and e-mail exchanges and Web downloads on my computer, then printed and sorted, underlined and typed until I had a column. Something about holding papers, and rearranging them, fired up my brain."
Using nothing but her computer and the fabulous new cut and paste feature, she has written a good article about measure that offices are taking to go green, all well know to TreeHugger readers, including printing both sides on paper, recycling, turning off computers at night and getting rid of bottled water. She even finds an architecture firm with a "worm habitat" and "worm wrangler." Entertaining reading at the ::New York Times. See TreeHugger for more ideas at How to Green Your Work.
Who has a real rolodex? Where am I supposed to keep business cards?
If you use Firefox there is an extension called TiddlySnip (http://tiddlysnip.com/) which lets you cut-n-paste text into a TiddlyWiki (http://tiddlywiki.com) so you can store, tag, edit and sort all those articles.
I also use a TiddlyWiki varient called TWAB (http://www.tiddly-twab.com/) as my electronic Rolodex.
TWAB works in IE and Opera, as well as Firefox.
So there are a couple of free open source ways to help you become better orginized and greener.
Paper consumption can really be kept at a minimum if you think of it. We often find ourselves wanting to print and finish what we are doing but suddenly, we see some errors in the supposed final copy. Either you read from the screen or print it on a used paper. Saves a lot of paper and trees of course!
I use my Mac's "Print to PDF" functionality if there's something I think I might need a copy of. Not only is it able to be backed up much more easily (and automatically) than a paper copy, it's indexed and searchable by the operating system. I don't even need to put them in the right folders to be able to find them later.
I keep my important documents, like my tax returns (which I e-file) on an encrypted flash drive in my safe.