The Ongoing Effort to be Paperless

A few years ago, I decided to really make a conscious effort to reduce the amount of paper coming into my home and office and also to reduce the amount of paper I store. Although we rely on computers and email, there is still a huge amount of paper that comes into our lives. That being said, I have found a few things to be helpful in reducing the paper influx.

Receiving bills electronically and paying them electronically has made a big dent in the amount of paper that comes in on a monthly basis. Receiving bank and investment statements in paperless format also helps. Taking steps to have my name removed from junk mail marketing lists, limiting magazine subscriptions to what I will actually read, and reducing our newspaper subscription from daily to just the weekend editions has also cut down on the paper pileup.

In conjunction with trying to reduce the paper I use and receive, I have also really made a commitment to recycling paper when I am through with it. While I had not been so good about recycling cans and bottles, mostly because of problems with insects being attracted to food remnants in my garage recycling bin, I have found it to be quite easy to recycle any and all paper products that have not had contact with food or moisture. I was actually quite surprised to find that even after taking so many steps to reduce the paper I brought into the house, I am filling up a recycling bin just about every other week, and this is not including newspapers.

Overall, I have found it is not really feasible for most people to be paperless, but we can be paper-less!