Inwas talking to a friend the other day and he said he never uses the second side of a sheet of paper because he doesn't want the ink to go through and ruin what's on the first side. Personally I find this surprising that people wouldn't use the second side of a piece of paper, especially when printing on it as that ink shouldn't ever go through the paper. Do you use the second side, or do you always use a new piece of paper?
We don't use the back of the paper in the office. However, printed white paper that are not used anymore like excess memo and old procedures are relegated as scratch paper which we can use for draft. Our office has an official policy on excess paper with print that they should not be thrown to the garbage and that departments should find a way to make use of them. At home, we also have excess printed paper that we use the back for drawing or list for market needs. Sometimes I use the back of the printed paper for instructions to our housemaid when we go on vacation.
I use the blank side of printed paper for scratch paper or to print something I do not need to send to someone. I also use the paper the kids bring home from school that is only printed on one side as scratch paper for notes.
I like to use 70 count spirals and so I start on page one and go all through, then start in from the other side, upside-down and go all the way back to the front again. You can get a lot more use out of the paper that way. And I buy those spirals during school supply season when they are cheap, cheap, cheap!
Some printers don't work well with paper that has been used before, but I used to do this if if was stuff for myself like instructions to go somewhere. I find some printers are sensitive to paper that has been printed on before and can cause jams, so it's not worth the risk on some printers.
I always use both sides of a paper sheet. In my college years specially, when I had to take note of almost everything and resolving plenty of math exercises of sorts.
We always print at both sides of the paper where I work. It is the standard. I find it really wasteful to print only on one side, since you're not going to use the other one for anything. I noticed in the company where I work that if the person is older, they tend to print useless stuff and print only on one side. For example, one of the executives I know that is really elderly prints even spreadsheets from the Excel, when he really just needed to look into the file. Such a waste of paper.
This is so me! I couldn't even fathom not using the other side of blank paper. It just comes off as extremely wasteful.
Which side of the paper to use depends on the quality of the paper and the quality of the ink. If the ink can seep through spoiling the writing on the other side, this means that whatever benefits this derives have been erased. I suppose the best way to save on paper is to use small writing format and not to leave big margins.
This is definitely one of my pet peeves, when people do not do this that is, and I even go one step further with it. If it is printing something off, I will get the four pages on one and then with the front and the back you have 8 pages total, for one piece of paper. Good for Earth of course, but I also just like having less to carry around. Makes sense to me, and thanks for sharing.
As far as professionally, I wouldn't use the second side of the paper because what was on the front side was confidential. Now that I'm not working, I not only use both sides of paper, but I snip it into pieces and use the smaller pieces for little notes, shopping lists, etc. I am going through everything in my office to rearrange the furniture, and was excited to discover a small stockpile of white paper. I have a lot of different colored papers that I used in school and at work, and those are what I've been using, but sometimes it's best to use white, and now I don't have to buy any for a while.
I personally use the second side of paper when I am writing and I am always writing, if the ink bleeds through I just change pens. In the office when I am printing I reuse the paper scraps (from shipping labels that I cut off) for notes and things I just keep them stacked in a basket. I hate wasting paper I use old newspaper and office paper ( i get it from an office) that is shredded for packing materials also.
We're very conscious of wasting paper, and try to do our bit, so we print on both sides. But we were really annoyed when we recently went to print and for some reason, our printer didn't print on both sides, using up an enormous amount of ink as well as paper. People in Botswana generally don't seem to be bothered either, which in turn frustrates and annoys me. We go one further and use any paper that's blank on the other side as scrap paper to get the most out of it and conserve paper.
Is your friend an artist? I used to used both sides of every piece of paper until I went to art school. My teacher told me that you should never use both sides, especially when using ink and certain paints, because they will eventually bleed through. The other reason is when you used a light board to trace your drawing for a transfer, it can be hard if there are sketches on the other side. So I don't draw on both sides the pages in my notebooks anymore because of those reasons. But if I'm just writing notes or stories, then I do.
I do if I am printing off directions or just some notes that I am writing at home. I don't do it in the office though unless it is requested. There are times when the printer will make it difficult to read the other side. I am super into recycling and saving paper though. I try to get people to print double sided. They just don't know about the settings.
Using both sides of the paper saves money. Stops you from having to buy a new set of paper so soon. There are three kids in my immediate household who all like to color, paint, and draw. We always sort of make them use both sides of the painter, unless they have painted and are still waiting for the painted side to dry.
In our office, we have a lot of movie scripts for discarding but we do not shred them anymore for they are our source of scratch paper. Yeah, we use the backside of those scripts. One script has about 100 pages so you can imagine the bulk of paper we have for scratch use with that hundreds of script. Even the other offices near us are asking for scratch paper because they know we have a lot.
I do use the other side of paper and it adds on savings. Moreover, if we leave one part blank that is a national waste I guess. We are resulting in to use of more paper and thereby cutting down more trees towards making paper. Being a nature lover I don’t advocate use of paper. In this digital world we should try to be paperless. In our country many well known corporates are paperless office and they do all communications on computer. Processes like leave approvals and order placing are done through computers. It is very convenient and easy to recover data whenever required. It also saves a lot of paper and reduces operational cost. Used paper can also be recycled to make notice papers which are really useful. I think there has to be a separate place to keep useless paper so that somebody can collect and recycle it.
For any school or office projects, I've never used the back side of the paper because it wasn't permitted and I got used to it. I may use it like that if I don't have enough paper but I think that stapling together documents or any sort of paper with just a one-side print looks a lot nicer that double sided print.
I love writing on actual paper but when I write something, I always consume all of the available portions most importantly the back of the paper because for me, it's a sign of respect to mother nature who gave men the capability of harvesting papers from her.