Sustainability in the Classroom

Each year at U of T, an estimated 10 million sheets of paper are used in the printing of lecture slides, tests, assignments, and other course materials in first- and second-year courses alone. More paper efficient courses tread more lightly on the environment and reduce costs for both departments and students. This tip sheet offers faculty strategies for reducing the amount of paper used in their courses.

Classroom Materials
It’s difficult to have a completely paperless classroom. However, faculty can reduce the amount of paper used in their classrooms by:

  • printing any course materials double-sided and encouraging students to print double-sided whenever possible.
  • printing multiple lecture slides on a single page. Handouts from PowerPoint can be printed with up to 9 slides per page. Handouts from PowerPoint can be printed with up to 9 slides per page.
  • creating a Quercus site for your course and posting all class documents to it. Use the Announcement tool in Quercus to notify students of new content.
  • whenever possible, allowing students to purchase an older, used edition of the textbook.

Further Resources