Students produce less paper waste while learning online

Students may be contributing less paper waste since online school was implemented across the province last March.

According to a study from the University of Waterloo, the average college student throws away 500 disposable cups and produces 145 kilograms of paper per year. However, students in one program at St. Clair College have significantly reduced the amount of paper they have been using since they started studying online.

Katherine Kaszas, artistic director of the Music, Theatre and Performance program at St. Clair College said her students are now able to access all of their documents and scripts online.

“I would say there is lots of savings for us in terms of the production of paper. A lot of the assignments are now submitted electronically either through Blackboard or email,” Kaszas said.

Kaszas also said the pandemic has caused her to transfer all of the paper programs and scripts into an online accessible format. She said this has also saved her tons of paper.

“Music Theatre students and performance students in all graduating classes throughout the entire province for example are always to present a song and a monologue or two songs to the industry,” said Kaszas.

“Presenting to our artistic directors, casting directors in January, this used to generate a lot of paper as well. You would have resumes, and headshots printed that have now totally gone online, so none of that paper was generated, and that would be across the whole province. I would say that has to be at least 300 students resumes and headshots. If you do the math on that I bet it is lots of paper.”

However even with paperless learning, Craig Whittaker, General Manager at Recycling Makes Cents, said he has not seen much of a change in business at all despite online learning reducing paper waste within schools.

“It really has not slowed anything down, I just got a call the other day to do 40 more cases (of paper),” Whittaker said.

According to the latest information by Environment Canada, paper and paper waste products account for more than ⅓ of all Canada’s waste.