May 22, 2008

Gave a speech to a conference on sustainable cities about what the University of Calgary was doing to demonstrate its comprehensive and deep commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability.  Presidents are often asked to speak publicly about the values and priorities of their universities.  If you’re interested, you can read the full speech at http://www.ucalgary.ca/president/activities/talks. While the talk emphasized success stories, I also pointed out that we still had a long way to go.  Here is the most poignant example I gave of this; I admit that it blew me away.

In 2006, the University of Calgary community printed (consumed) 72 million pieces of paper.  For those of you who prefer to think visually, consider that 500 sheets of paper is a stack 2 inches high.  So, 72 million pieces of paper is a stack of paper 4.5 miles high – this is equivalent to about 38 Calgary Towers stuck one on top of another.  By 2007, we had reduced our paper consumption to 56 million sheets, through a variety of interventions the most important of which likely was widespread introduction of desktop printers that were set for two-sided printing.  That’s a saving of a stack of paper about one mile high. Good progress, but still an awful lot of trees.
 
I suspect that the magnitude of paper use on many of our big universities is similar. The irony is that paper use often increases despite all the new digital technology. A lesson, I suppose, is that if we are to become more sustainable, it is not just about introducing new technology.  It is also about doing things differently from the way we did them in the past. This appears to be hard. As  John Maynard Keynes said:  “…the difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.”
 
Thanks for reading.

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