Bridgewater College plans to save 50 trees this year.
In its ongoing mission to make the college environmentally responsible and sustainable, Bridgewater has instituted a campus-wide printing system that eliminates laser printers from labs and classrooms and replaces them with 15 printing kiosks located throughout the campus. The new printing system is expected to reduce printing and paper use by 30 percent. The system is anticipated to save paper equivalent to approximately 50 trees each academic year.
Also, the paper used in the kiosks contains 50 percent recycled materials.
Students are able to wirelessly send documents to the kiosks for printing from anywhere on campus or print documents from a USB at any kiosk. Since the college doesn’t use printing to generate revenue, only a small fee is charged per printed document with the system – about eight cents for black and white and 45 cents for color. Students’ printing accounts will be preloaded each semester with a stipend of $5.
“The college has undertaken this initiative to enhance its sustainability efforts,” said Terry Houff, chief information officer and director of Bridgewater’s C.E. Shull Information Technology Center. “People tend to print a lot of material without thinking twice about whether it is necessary. The new system will challenge everyone to consider what can be used electronically rather than in paper form.”
The system itself is called WEPA, which stands for “Wireless Everywhere, Print Anywhere.” The brainchild of New Jersey-based Heartland Payment Systems, WEPA is designed to eliminate an institution’s dependence on equipment purchases and leases, hardware and software licenses and maintenance and server integration fees, all the while offering students enhanced convenience and cutting-edge printing technology.
Houff noted that the WEPA method is more economical per page than printing from a personal inkjet printer and that all WEPA kiosks print in vibrant, high-definition color.
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