Killing trees

New printer cartridge - $20
Pack of Office grade printer paper - $5
Saving trees by printing double sided - priceless.

Here's the problem with Blackboard, the online resource for college classes these days: Instead of students buying a good old Kinko's/Copytron coursepack like we did back in the day, some poor graduate assistant sap has to scan and upload a gazillion documents for students to access. Sounds pretty earth-friendly, eco-happy, tree-loving, yes?

Turns out you have to print most of this junk anyway to be able to use it in the class, mark it up with margin notes and highlighters (yes, I am so old school like that), or access it later in life with ease.

During the school year, I usually laser-print it all double-sided at school (don't tell the district, eh?) but with summer here, I figured I'd be responsible and do it at home.

Mind you, I've now invested $30 for this session's printing extravaganza, plus the $3 for a binder to put all this in. My trusty HP deskjet only has a manual double-sided feature (alas). So, here I sit, clicking and printing and turning pages and clicking and printing and so on until I grow too weary of this tedium or finish, whichever comes first. but I'm saving trees. Sort of. Right?