Cover sheets are to be turned off for two day in week three for a joint study by Green committee and ISS (Information Systems Services), The reason that we feel this type of action is needed is that the cover sheets represent a huge proportion of unnecessary wastage that the university creates each year. Green committee have been campaigning for many years to get the cover sheets turned off (you may remember a paper tree in Alex Square and a petition last summer) and now the hard work has come to fruition.
However the sheets that tell people they haven’t got enough credit can not be turned off due to software. ISS have taken many steps to make itself Greener and it is important that they are commended for these actions, for example they now recycle their printer toner using a company recommended buy green comm. It has also been noted that the students union used recycled paper (by evolve) but the Library does not, a trial of recycled paper was done in the library but not data was collected, there will be a two week re-trail where statistics will be collected for two weeks beforehand to create some statistics, if the trail is effective then ISS are happy to make the change.
Many people have argued in the past that the cover sheets are necessary to tell people how much of their budget if left, yet this can be done on the desktop by using the print budget monitoring programme. People who need to claim money back need can do it without the cover sheet by clicking on the Print Budget Management application on the desktop which will allow you to view and then print a statement of your printing activity, these sheets can be handed to the finance office in the LUSU building and it cuts the amount of paper needed to claim back money as multiple jobs are shown on one sheet.
After the trail feedback will be collected via ISS who will send out questionnaire via email to students who use the printers during the trail, anyone else who wishes to give feedback can e-mail me at l.michael@lancaster.ac.uk. The data collected during the trail will be reviewed by ISS in the printing development group who say they are happy to stop cover sheets if the trail goes well.
