A Paperless World?

This morning I spent a little time updating some of my bills addresses since the move there were a few that fell by the wayside and I didn’t have a chance to update them until now. When I went in to change my address with Verizon (my cell phone carrier) a little box popped up encouraging me to go paperless. It looked like this:

I already get email reminders that my bill is due so I figured it really was high time to make the leap into total paperless billing. It felt so good that when I set up my new account with my cable and internet provider Comcast I took full advantage of their ecoBill program. I will never receive a single paper bill from them, in fact the only thing in their folder in my filing cabinet is the signed installation work order. Hooray!

It occurred to me that we had 100% wind power supplied electric in our last apartment and I did search my new provider’s website to see if they do the same but alas they are not quite there yet and the old company is not available in my new area. I did however enroll in their paperless billing program!

That was three down and only one to go because our car insurance and student loans are all paperless already. I was a little bummed to discover that Toyota Financial doesn’t offer paperless billing. I put an inquiry out to Customer Service to see if perhaps I was just missing it on the site or maybe it was a special request thing only. Here is to the hope that it is something I can accomplish asap!

Another thing we are planning to do this week is both Matt and I will be looking into 41pounds.org again. We have talked about this before and it was successful for Melissa. With a new move comes a small reprieve from the unwanted junk mail and then boom, it seems to hit again all at once. Hopefully 41pounds.org will help get rid of everything before it even starts.

It might be small steps and I might be way behind the curve on accomplishing this but I am just happy to be able to say I am personally reducing the pounds of paper that come in and out of my own house every year.

Are you doing paperless billing too? What other ways have you reduced your own addiction to paper? How do you recycle your shredded paper?

Eco-Friendly Ways to Use Paper

As a person who always looks for ways to creatively reuse items that come into my house I started thinking of the number of pieces of paper that show up on a daily basis. The first eco blog I posted over at The Organic Mechanic was on creative uses for shredded paper and recently Charmaine sent me a link to paper flowers. In our conversation after receiving the link I commented on a way to use newspaper as wrapping paper. I wondered if perhaps there were even more functional or funky ways to use paper.

A moderate level of paper makes its way into my home and I find much of it ends up in the shredder. Generally I would just place a paper bag full of the tiny strips in my recycle bin but then a while back I ordered a gift and when the box arrived I was immediately impressed with the packing material used by the seller -- shredded paper. It opened my eyes to a new use for this material so when we moved we used shredded paper to pack items like dishes and it worked like a charm!

The paper flowers that I was introduced to are nothing like the crepe paper and pipe cleaner style most of us made in kindergarten. The paper items that Revolt Media creates are made from scrapbook and other specialty papers and are sophisticated and classy. Currently they are working on a custom order of origami style flowers in red and black for a wedding party. Upon the end of the ceremony the flowers can simply be recycled!

Charmaine was questioning what to use for wrapping paper since she had used up all of her brown paper bags. I suggested painting newspaper with appropriate holiday colors and then use it as home made gift wrap. This could be a fun project to complete with kids to make their gifts personalized. Everyone would have unique wrapping, making not just the gift but its packaging really special.

Writers can find many uses for old papers such as creating a personalized journal. By taking papers due to be recycled, cutting them down to the same size, stacking them and then Japanese stab binding the pages with a front and back cardboard cover, a journal is born!

Making furniture from paper has become not only an art form but a career for artist Jens Praet. By adding a bit of resin to simple shredded paper Praet has created everything from bookshelves to desks and he claims the pieces are even stronger than wood. It might be cool to keep those Christmas cards we never know what to do with at the end of the season by turning them into an end table.

With a little creative ingenuity we can find even more uses for all that paper we look at once and throw away.