Saving the planet from the gripping binds of waste directly related to the world we work in may seem like an insurmountable summit to climb. However, taking simple steps, one at a time, can add up to making significant differences. Take for instance the fastening of paper documents.
The average office worker throughout all U.S. businesses will collectively use 4 trillion sheets of paper. Most of these will end up becoming combined into a network of associated documents, bound/fastened, and then archived into a file cabinet.
This prolific use of paper documentation has it roots dating back to the early 19th century. Paper production had been in existence on a modest scale in Europe since the 12th century. However, beginning in the 1800's mechanized production of processing pulp for the use in paper making began to make paper much more readily available and less costly. The result was an explosion in the cheap exchange of information
Along with the growth in the use of paper documents, came the need to bind them together in associated or linked groupings. So, the business of paper fastening also began rapidly growing, by the end of the second half of the 19th century.
One of the primary binding systems that evolved was the staple. This fastener originated from the concept of using a straight pin or wire to bind paper documents together. Following the invention and patent of the mechanical stapling device, use of 'stapling units' quickly grew to insert and clinch the staple wire.
The standard staple is manufactured with 210 staples to a strip and packed 5000 staples to a box. A box of these standard staples weighs in at 6.1 ounces. Today, 643,000 metric tons of staples are produced annually in the United States.
According to The Green Book1, if one-third of the documents that are stapled could be bound without staples, we could keep nearly a trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) staples out of the trash each year.
How you might ask? Well, so did we. The result was a 21st century retrofit of the so called "staple-less staplers" manufactured by the Clipless Paper Fastener Company of Newton Iowa, beginning in 1909.
It's called... an Eco Stapler. No metal staples!
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Just another way to make a small difference with a simple step.
Notes
1 Rogers, E., & Kostigen, T. (2007). The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet one Simple Step at a Time. New York: Three Rivers Press.
