We Need to Stop the Paper Trail

by Madison Peck

The amount of paper our students and staff use is horrendous. The copy center can use 5+ boxes, which contain 5000 sheets of paper, a day. While the HHS copy center does fill orders for all the schools in Hudson, only 30% of the orders come from outside the high school.

Out of the 20 teachers who responded to my survey, the average number of copies teachers make in a day is 56. And with over 100 teachers in the school that would mean teachers make about 5600 copies each day. Although the survey showed the average number of copies is 56, several teachers indicated that they make up to 180 copies a day.

However some teachers are making an effort to go paperless. Teachers have started posting handouts online and have created a classroom website. If the students had computers every day in class with them, it would make it easier to go paperless, especially since some teachers don’t have textbooks. How can they go paperless?

Some teachers have had students send assignments by e-mail or through Google docs while others created a class blog. Some teachers have also stopped using a paper plan and gradebook.

Paper is recyclable and can be renewed, but it can only be recycled once. So eventually the paper will have to get thrown away.

Hudson High School uses too much paper, and we need to do anything we can to decrease the amount of paper we use.