Proposal Narrative

PROPOSAL NARRATIVE

Project Title: UW-EC Commitment to Paper Reduction Project: Reducing Waste, Energy Consumption and Our Collective Carbon Footprint

1. Sustainability outcomes for this project include reduction paper waste, energy consumption, decreased paper jams in the printer, increase in library and LTS staff time to help students.

As supported by John Pollitz, director of libraries: The library supports this proposal because it will make it much easier for students to choose to save paper and money while being ecological. It will also benefit the librarians because currently they spend a lot of time helping students change the mapping on their computers when they want to use duplex printing because we have a mix of single sheet and duplex printers. If all of our printers were duplex printers the reference librarians could spend more of their time helping students with detailed research questions.

As described by Greg Rineck, Learning and Technology Services: LTS is in support of this proposal because there will be only one printer type for us to support in the General Access Labs and Library. We will save on the space required to store the printer supplies. Training time for student staff will be reduced. In addition, the new duplex printers use up to 50% less energy than the older printers.

We offer these additional outcomes related to each area of sustainability that this project will address:

Electricity/Energy: Duplex printers use less energy than single-page printers by up to 50% with the use of “Instant-On Technology” (From HP documentation)

Awareness: Multiple sustainability awareness displays throughout McIntyre library and the Learning and Technology Services computer laboratory (Old Library)

Waste Management: Per LTS: 1,400,000 double-sided pages were printed spring semester 2010. That alone saved the equivalent amount of pages of paper. With all duplex printers available, the assumption can be made that most of the remaining 500,000 pages would have been cut in half.

The graph compares page counts of duplex & single-page printer. It shows the dramatic increase in duplex printing across campus. Students have shown that they prefer this method even when it takes some effort to choose duplex over single page printing. 2. If all 10 printers are funded, this would be a one-time only project. It could be narrowed in scope if less than 10 printers were funded. Additionally, this project is requesting funds for the main campus, which means that all students would be able to access these printers. Since the funds for this project are allocated from the segregated fee, which is paid for by all students, we believe that funding for this proposal should be addressed as a campus-wide priority.

3. Once the project receives funding, it is anticipated to take less than 30 days to install the printers.

4. Once the campus has one uniform printer, it will allow for the opportunity for greater printer efficiency literacy. The McIntyre library and LTS would also be willing to feature a display in the Grand Corridor display case, plasma screen displays and the Old Library that specifically addresses awareness regarding paper consumption, UW-EC sustainability goals, technology and energy reduction, etc.

5. This project will be visible to the campus through the methods as described above under answer #4.

6. This will be an on-campus outreach/partnership only. The primary project coordinators for “UW-EC Commitment to Paper Reduction Project: Reducing Waste, Energy Consumption and Our Collective Carbon Footprint” and “Resident Hall Duplex Printer Expansion” have talked and support each other's proposals. While this is a competitive application process, our overall goal is to see the UW-EC community reach and exceed its sustainability goals. In addition to our support for each other, we are both willing to collaborate with each other if both projects are able to receive funding.

7. LTS can collect data as for the number of pages printed, paper jams and hardware errors.