Save the Earth - One Fax At a Time

April 24th, 2008 Judy

I have a printer and a fax machine in my office. The fax machine recently ran amok. It was a simple fix, just a quick cartridge change and a cleaning, but the machine was down for about a week. After I fixed the problem, the fax queue began to unload. Sheet after sheet spewed forth from the machine. All totaled, 21 sheets of paper were expended. Unfortunately not a single sheet was requested information or even desired information. Everything from vacation deals to mortgage payment plans to beachwear offers had infiltrated the fax machine, wasted paper and ink. When the fax machine has not had a period of interrupted service, these unwanted fax don’t seem to make much of an impact. Coming in all at once makes one realize how much paper and resources are truly wasted. If 21 sheets are wasted in one week, 1092 are wasted in one year. That’s over 2 reams of paper from my office alone. I used to simply recycle the paper. Today I took the time to call the number on the bottom of each fax so I would no longer receive unwanted messages. It didn’t take long. Imagine how many resources we could save if we all took a moment of our time to stop the waste. I’m curious if there is a global registry to contact to be removed from all unsolicited fax applications. –Sort of like the National Do Not Call Registry. Anybody know of something like that?

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