Little Things Make a Difference

Believe it or not, my entire life does not revolve around occupational safety - probably only about 95% of my life revolves around occupational safety. I do think of other things, and this post is simply the musings of a guy who wonders about why we do things and what a simple change can make.

Over the past few months, the construction market has taken a nose dive. Yes, it's mostly the result of the huge financial problems that we are all experiencing, but some of it has to do with the natural winter slowdown. I expect to have more projects to visit soon, but in the meantime, I'm keeping busy at work by helping out with records management. Currently, our relatively small company spends about $1200/month to store construction project records just in case... . It seems to be a large amount of money, but if a problem occurs or if there is even the perception that the general contractor was "at fault" when a problem occurs (like a leaky roof, mold, etc.), the record storage could prove to be a very tiny "drop in the bucket."

So the boss said, let's see if we can "get rid of some of that paper" and reduce the number of storage units that we rent. I suggested that we scan as many of the files as possible and discard the paper (believe it or not, there are a lot of records that must be kept for 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, or even permanently). So to facilitate this records management program, I helped out with moving the approximately 20 cardboard file storage boxes per project (not including the "blueprints") to the office for evaluation and scanning.

Okay, so this is getting to be a long story. But, keep reading, there is a point to be made.

Those boxes are heavy, and after lifting each box multiple times, I started to wonder at the weight of paper that we keep. As I prepared a box of records for scanning (making sure that there weren't a lot of duplicates (there weren't), taking out staples, paper clips, etc. I began to wonder at the weight of the seemingly inconsequential materials in each box. One box contained 267 paperclips - that's a lot of paper clips - and at least that number of staples. Normally, if you were to discard the box of papers, the paperclips, etc. would be discarded too. But, I recovered the paperclips and "recycled" them. I wonder how much we spend each year on paperclips that are simply discarded.

This reminded my of something that I read on a box of Celestial Seasonings Herb Tea. On one flap of the box of tea they posed the question, "Ever wonder why no string and tag?" The answer (although I suspect it has a lot to do with cost) was "Our unique pillow-style tea bag is the result of our commitment to doing what's best for the environment. Because these natural fiber tea bags don't need strings, tags, staples or individual wrappers, we're able to save more than 3.5 million pounds of waste from entering landfills every year!" That's a huge amount of waste just from one company. I wonder how much we could save by limiting the use of staples, and recovering paper clips before discarding a file. To say nothing about saving paper by not printing, or saving storage space by saving records in electronic format.

And by the way, all of the paper that gets scanned goes to a local shredding company. They shred for free because they have a market for shredded paper - yep, it gets reused! But wouldn't it be better if it never had to be used in the first place? I try not to keep paper records. I communicate, whenever possible, only via e-mail. And to keep from storing paper for future reference, when someone sends me paperwork that I find necessary to keep, I scan it and toss the paper.

If we do things right, it will also prevent injuries at work too. Lifting all that paper certainly exposed me to potential soft tissue injury.