A Little Matter

There are many little things we can do to save the Earth. Here's a reflection on saving paper that occurred to me in an auto today.

My parents are academicians. There are lots of empty notebooks lying around in the house courtesy the conferences they have to attend. I have always tried to use them as an alternative to buying new notebooks for college. It's a great way of saving paper. But this is only in college. Think about school.

In school, we used to have prescribed khatas which were the only brand we could use. These khatas generally used virgin paper, and a lot of it at that! (does anyone remember metropolitan khatas?). We could never use any other form or brand of notebooks. Isn't this a colossal waste? There are quite a few notebook brands available nowadays that make the khatas out of recycled paper. Or even for kids in situations like mine, who already have tons of khatas lying unused around the house; wouldn't it be great if they were encouraged to use the resources they have instead of using up additional unnecessary resources? And in school we needed a LOT of paper!! And then there were tuitions. I mean, a khata is a khata. Does it really matter what brand or colour it is? These are one of those unnecessarily trivial and useless rules schools still steadfastly adhere to. Instead of incorporating subjects like EVS to spread the message of conservation, teaching kids little conservation tactics like these, I think, would work better.