Grain production is falling even as population growth is upping the demand for grain. The global population needs a growth of 3.5% in wheat production and 6% for corn production in 2011 just to keep current with present demand. An obvious result of the drop in grain production? Food prices are escalating.
The issue is further impacted when grains are diverted to produce biofuels. Currently about 7% of corn and seed oil go for biofuel production, and surely less dependence on foreign petroleum is essential. But at the same time shifting 7% of the corn supply for fuel production adds to grain shortages even as it boosts food prices. Grain for fuel is a win-win but also a lose-lose solution.
In 1798 Thomas Malthus warned in his famous An Essay on the Principle of Population that population growth might outpace the global food supply.
I wonder what the old boy would say if he’d known of climate change.
When I first started with computers back in the days when floppy disks really were floppy, one benefit of this brave new world was supposed to be that soon offices would be paperless. Ah well, the best laid plans…
Instead, we in the US use 3.7 million tons of copy paper annually or some 700 billion sheets. The average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper a year. 40% of our garbage is paper and paperboard and while paper is recyclable, much of it never is.
Even though the paperless office never arrived, My Green Mind can point you to a great new way to green your office printing. It will reduce the amount of pages you print to get the same information which helps you use a lot less ink. You’ll reduce cartridge costs and cartridge landfill accumulation.
The solution is a free downloadable program for Windows 2000, XP and Vista—though not yet for Mac users. The program and its users have already saved hundreds of trees and over 2.4 million pages of paper and 1.7 million pounds of CO2. Use the program and you’ll help reduce greenhouse gasses and cut paper waste, saving money as you do.
So how does the FREE program work?
It’s called GreenPrint and it employs a patent-pending technology to help you select and omit sections in pages you don’t really want—to eliminate printing waste before you print. For example, suppose the last page in a series has only a few unimportant lines that you wouldn’t want to print anyway. GreenPrint identifies that page automatically, giving you the option of excluding it from your print job. Or say you’re printing an online article, but you don’t want all the ads or banners or unnecessary images—especially those ink-intensive color headers. GreenPrint offers the option to remove images when you print. GreenPrint does this by analyzing each page of every document in the printer queue to look for typical waste characteristics (like that last page with just a URL, banner ad, logo, or legal jargon).
GreenPrint also has a PDF creation option so instead of printing, you can save your revised document in a PDF format and eliminate printing altogether. GreenPrint s ave time and money, and trees while it reduces greenhouse gasses.
GreenPrint, which is FREE, lets you:
-Highlight and remove unwanted pages
-Decide what prints and what doesn’t
–remove images or blocks filled with unwanted color
-Create PDFs with one click
-Tracks unprinted pages, ink and money saved.
See an excellent demo of GreenPrint at work here: demo of GreenPrint .
Or, download it for free: GreenPrint for free here .
Earn points for free biodegradable litter bags or for cleaning products in return for those you purchase. Sign in here and you are signed up for the FREE program!
