Wednesday, April 8, 2009

This idea is full of holes ...

As people who love the earth, we try to reduce our use of everything. Whenever possible, we try to use electronic versions of documents rather than print them out. If printing a document is required, we use recycled paper and print on both the front and back. In terms of the printed page, I thought that was about all we could do. But ... I was wrong!

I recently learned about something fabulous. It is simple, easy to use, and saves ink. Yes, ink.

Introducing the Ecofont.


The Ecofont is developed by SPRANQ, a creative communications company located in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Basically, it's a font full of holes:



Tiny little holes run through each letter, reducing the amount of ink required by up to 20%. And ... the best news ... the Ecofont is free to download and free to use.

I've downloaded the font and tried it out ... it looks great and the "holes" don't compromise the print quality when using a standard font size (in my case ... font size 12). At larger sizes, the holes do become visible. But, imagine the savings if every standard letter ... every standard document ... most of our printing ... was done using 20% less ink. We'd use less ink, save money ... and walk a little gentler on the earth.

So ... today's green living tip is easy ... click over to Ecofont and download it. Then, whenever it becomes necessary to print something out ... use it instead of other, standard fonts.

Wow ... wasn't that fabulous?


Before you go, I'd like to ask a favor ... I've entered Reduce Footprints into a contest. Basically, the blog with the most votes at the end of the month wins. So, if you like this site ... I'd really appreciate your vote. Just click on the following picture which will take you to the "voting booth" ... and thanks:




As always ... I would love to hear from you!