Barbara J. Hamby

Recycling to the Nth Degree

My recycling has reached a new level. Today I dipped into my stack of used printer paper saved for drafts of my writing. The dates on some of the materials went back to 1984. There were pages of leftover information about United Way from the year I was a loaned executive at Multnomah County. There were charts from my brief, ill-advised training period as a mortgage broker. That was a fiasco and is another story more suitable for my memoirs.

The pile of used paper has been reduced over the years from somewhere between three and six feet to less than a foot. In addition, I have a bit of continuous paper for a tractor printer that I haven’t used in many moons. As a matter of fact, that printer was created by attaching an adapter to an electric typewriter. I still have the typewriter, but have no idea how the printing capability works any more. It was slow and noisy, but it did the job when better printers were still quite expensive.

When I remember to use the recycled paper, I feel quite noble, especially if I happen to remember to put it in the printer correctly. Otherwise it prints on the side already used and wastes a lot of expensive printer ink. When I think about how many times I moved all that paper around in 22 years, it’s pretty depressing. At any rate, it appears I won’t be moving any of it again.