Mary Schantz August 25th, 2009
The typical U.S. office worker uses about 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. How much paper is 10,000 sheets? In one large stack, 10,000 sheets of unused paper, weighs about 100 pounds. Last year, members of the College of Wooster Community printed and copied roughly 5,400,000 pages. That’s equivalent to 27 tons of paper.
The Environmental Defense Fund provides a paper calculator to help organizations and individuals understand the impact of paper usage. Click here to see a break down of our contribution and what you can do to help reduce paper usage on campus by 5%:
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dwaldron April 22nd, 2009
Happy Earth Day, Wooster!
It seems appropriate to mark the occasion by posting about a technological development of a kind not usually covered by the OIT blog. Jon Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya has developed a solar oven. Dubbed the Kyoto Box, the oven consists of two cardboard boxes and an acrylic cover that admits and then traps the sun’s rays. A bit of black paint and silver foil help to concentrate the heat. Without electricity or any power source other than the sun’s rays, Kyoto Box users can boil water and cook many foods. The ability to boil water is critical to fighting waterborne illnesses. In addition, the Kyoto Box could reduce the use for wood and other fossil fuels for cooking in the developing world. The oven is expected to cost approximately $5. More information is available from CNN.
dwaldron February 20th, 2009
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has conducted a review of print operations and print infrastructure on campus. The goal of this review was to develop strategies to enhance print services for the campus community, to realize efficiencies within OIT in terms of delivering and supporting these services, to reduce the environmental impact of print operations in line with the College’s recently adopted Commitment to Environmental Stewardship, and to reduce associated costs. As a result of this review, OIT has adopted four strategies. These are:
- to encourage the shift of print traffic away from LaserJets and similar single-purpose devices toward more cost effective multifunction devices
- to deploy devices that are energy efficient, and that support duplex printing and other features that reduce paper usage
- to reduce the number of LaserJets and similar devices on-campus
- to deploy the Pharos print management system across the entire campus
OIT intends to implement these strategies on a building-by-building basis. Mary Schantz, Director of User Services, will work with the Building and Administrative Coordinators in each building to analyze needs and to identify solutions and configurations that satisfy those needs within the context of our newly adopted strategies.
The College currently has a lease agreement with MT Business Technologies to provide 52 multifunction devices (printer/copiers) to campus. In conjunction with the most recent renewal of this contract, the College ensured that all these devices are Energy Star compliant, support duplex printing and offer scan-to-email functionality. MT also provides support and maintenance for 110 HP LaserJet printers owned by the College. Our fleet of LaserJets is aging, does not provide environmentally friendly functions like duplex printing, and does not provide other convenient services like scan-to-email. In addition, the per-printed-page cost associated with LaserJets exceeds that of multifunction devices. These facts, and the desire to avoid the significant costs associated with replacing aging LaserJets, provide the rationale for encouraging a shift toward multifunction devices and reducing the number of LaserJets through consolidation and the elimination of redundancy.
Currently, the College does not have a standard print management tool. Four different print systems are in use—Novell, IP, Appletalk and Pharos. The lack of a standard complicates print support. OIT believes that, of the four systems currently in use, Pharos offers the feature set most consistent with our goal of providing quality print service in ways that permit us to reduce the impact on the environment and lower costs. Pharos provides tools that make it possible to create user-friendly installation packages, remotely manage print queues and monitor the level of activity and associated resource usage.
OIT is keenly aware that our academic mission is dependent upon a quality, reliable print service. The outlined strategies are designed to permit us to provide such service in ways that are more consistent with environmental and financial realities.
dwaldron February 17th, 2009
Each day US homes and businesses discard approximately 133,000 personal computers. It is estimated that 50 million tons of electronic equipment are discarded globally each year. Because this discarded equipment (e-waste) contains multiple toxins, this constitutes a significant environmental problem.
The Office of Information Technology is partnering with a group of students enrolled in this semester’s Social Entrepeneurship seminar. That group is charged with examining the e-waste stream generated by the College and making recommendations as to how that stream might be managed to minimize its environmental impact. The group is also exploring the possibility that decommissioned computers might be of value to students or others who do not currently own personal computers. OIT sees this work as an important element of its effort to make its operations more environmentally sustainable. We are very grateful to these students for their work on this important study.
Aung Maw Myo Lwin, Prajaya Shrestha, Jiuwei Zhang and Lydia Yeung
dwaldron September 12th, 2008
The Office of Information Technology has formed a working group to focus on the environmental impact of its operations. The group includes CITO David Waldron and representatives from each of the four departments within OIT. These representatives are Marlene Brown (Applications Development), Roger Dills (Digital Infrastructure), Matt Gardzina (Instructional Technology) and Mary Schantz (User Services). Assistant Registrar Wil Burton is also a member of the group.
The group will work to reduce power consumption and resource utilization in ways that are consistent with OIT’s work in support of our institutional mission. The group will also focus on managing electronic waste in environmentally responsible ways. Regular updates on the group’s work and all OIT’s sustainability efforts will appear on this blog.
dwaldron January 20th, 2008
In an effort to better inform members of the campus community about the various information technology resources available to them, the Office of Information Technology has launched an effort to enhance the documentation of these resources and to improve its organization and accessibility. New documentation is being created in the College wiki and links to it can be found under the “Computing Resources” tab of the IT website. Currently, the wiki contains information about audio and video production resources, copying and printing services, classroom technology, IT help desks and networking services (including wireless). The documentation initiative will continue throughout the Spring 2008 semester and into the summer, and many new documents will be created. The initiative is being guided by User Services Intern Catherine Grandgeorge.