Why Reduce Paper? To make paper, we need to take one of our most important natural resources – Trees. Trees: Help clean the air we breath by absorbing greenhouse gases; Help us breathe by recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen; Provide shelter and habitat for animals; and Are beautiful to look at and fun to play around.

Reducing Paper Printing double-sided can reduce your paper usage by 50%. Encourage your teachers to allow double-sided assignments. Only print what is necessary. Use both sides of the page in your notebooks. If you make a mistake, use your eraser instead of getting a new sheet.

Go Digital! Encourage your teachers to use the whiteboard or SMART board instead of paper. Edit assignments on- screen and only print your final copy. Bookmark pages instead of printing. Save files to your computer instead of printing

Reusing Paper Keep a bin in your classroom for collecting scrap paper. Use scrap paper for things like rough drafts and math calculations. Collect paper from the copy room that has only been printed to one side to make notebooks.

Recycling Paper 37% of the waste we throw away every day in Newfoundland and Labrador is paper. It is important to recycle any paper that can’t be reduced or reused. Recycling saves our natural resources and energy.

Save a Tree Reduce is the first of the 3R’s because it’s the most important. The best thing we can do for the environment is reduce first, then reuse and then recycle. When we reduce the amount of paper we use, we help the environment by saving trees.