A number of news organizations have discussed the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's decision to switch fonts to save printer ink.
The school spends $100,000 on toner a year, so you can imagine how much printing goes on in their computer labs.
Computer technicians estimated that the Century Gothic font uses 30 percent less ink than Arial, the default font in the school's e-mail client. The change was inspired by Ecofont, a software package that allows you to save ink while printing in any font by adding tiny holes to each letter, using less ink overall.
Here's Printer.com's breakdown of the fonts that use the least amount of ink, which the site estimates could save the average private printer about $20 a year --- and more for commercial clients.
Now, critics have also pointed out ...
... that Century Gothic is wider and therefore may require you to print on more pages than Arial would. (You could always just adjust the line spacing and margins, though.)
And you can't easily change fonts on PDF and other files such as articles on the Internet that have already been formatted for you. I'd also guess that printing text puts a lot less strain on ink supplies than, say, printing photos --- or some coupons with images.
Actually, the best way to save printer ink is to avoid printing at all. But, if you want to stretch the life of your printer cartridge, it's worth a few seconds of thought and planning to consider format before you hit the "Print" button on text documents --- especially if you're making large numbers of copies.
Outside of a busy college campus, what are people printing out these days? I used to print recipes, but now I just e-mail them to myself and bring my phone or even my laptop into the kitchen.
P.P.S. Don't miss yesterday's early Cheap Trick Thursday post highlighting Tax Day free stuff and deals available on April 15!
UPDATED: Don't miss jupiter's excellent suggestion in the comments below about another way to reduce your need to print.