Printing with Less Paper

A very quick and simple way to save money is to change the setting on your printer to duplex printing. Duplex means double-sided - I don't know why they don't just call it double-sided printing. To set it, you go to your printer's settings panel and select Duplex printing.

Some printers will print first on one side and then will automatically feed the sheet back in to print on the second side. Most printers though, will print all the odd numbered pages of a document first. You simply let them drop into your print tray. When all the odd-numbered sides have been printed, your computer will tell you to put the paper back in to finish off the print job. You pick up the pile of paper, turn it over and put it back into your print feeder. The printer will then print all the even-numbered pages of your document.

This will halve the amount of paper you use, and will therefore cost you half as much in paper.

Of course, you could simply read your documents on-screen, and that way you would use no paper. But I have generally found that people prefer to read on paper than on-screen.