blog/data/2013-03-26-green-font.txt

   1 Title: Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)
   2 Tags: english
   3 Date: 2013-03-26 15:10
   4
   5 <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
   6 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
   7 font you use when printing.</p>
   8
   9 <p>Three years ago,
  10 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
  11 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
  12 changed their default front from
  13 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
  14 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
  15 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
  16 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
  17 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
  18 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
  19 prints.</p>
  20
  21 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
  22 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
  23 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
  24 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
  25 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
  26 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
  27 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
  28 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
  29 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
  30 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
  31 depend on the documents printed.</p>
  32
  33 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
  34 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
  35 and save some money in the process.</p>
  36
  37 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
  38 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
  39 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
  40 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
  41 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
  42 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
  43 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
  44 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
  45 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>