General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums14 year old saves governments $400 million annually.
As human beings living in modern times, weve all experienced our share of pain and loss not because we dont always get what we want out of life or because it ends in death, but because weve all owned printers at some point. You might be able to set up a command line Bitcoin mining rig, but theres a good chance youve had more trouble trying to connect to a wireless printer at your place of work. Depending on your age, even if you are Printer Wizard, Lord of Paper, youve still most likely spent way too much money on toner cartridges. If a few hundred dollars seems expensive to a single person, imagine what an entire government must be spending on toner.
One 14-year-old middle schooler did just that for a science fair, and devised a way for the government to save $400 million per year while still being able to print as many documents as it always has.
Suvir Mirchandani, a student of Dorseyville Middle School, noticed that he was receiving many more paper handouts than when he was in elementary school, and began thinking about the efficiency of that. So, as is middle school tradition, this became his science fair project.
Suvir pointed out that printer ink is twice as expensive as French perfume by volume, which CNN noted is actually correct. He compared four different popular typefaces Times New Roman, Garamond, Century Gothic, and Comic Sans and focused on how much ink was used per each letter, focusing on the common characters a, e, o, r, and t. He enlarged and printed each letter on card stock, cut them out, and weighed them.
Not much of a difference to the naked eye, but a world of difference to government spending.
He found that, if the school switched to Garamond which employs thinner strokes, and thus, less ink it could cut down on its ink consumption by 24%, saving $21,000 per year. Eventually, Suvir repeated his tests on sample pages from the Government Printing Office which has an annual printing budget of $1.8 billion and found the same results. If both the GPO and state governments switched their font usage to thinner fonts such as Garamond, they could save around $400 million per year in ink alone.
Hilariously, a spokesperson for the Government Printing Office one-upped poor Suvir by noting that, actually, the administration is trying to become more environmentally friendly by moving content to the web rather than printing anything at all. However, Suvir responded in kind, noting that not everything will be moved to the internet, and changing fonts can still save money.
http://www.geek.com/news/14-year-old-discovers-government-would-save-400-million-per-year-by-changing-fonts-1589563/
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)but I don't see Garamond as an option for my usual word processing program.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Deep13
(39,154 posts)...and Fed. employees would pay for the savings with eye strain.
We really need to get away from this public-spending-is-bad thinking. One reason we are still in a recession is because the public sector is being starved.
Just.....wow.
Niceguy1
(2,467 posts)Depending on how durable the font is for reproduction and transmittal not to mention digitization.
May cost more if it doesnt perform as well as tnr
joeglow3
(6,228 posts)I am betting the answer is "no."
Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)And cutting from the federal government is not a bad thing when it is done properly. China might sell a few less toner cartridges, but that is not going to hurt the economy.
By your logic, should a federal employee print a few hundred extra sheets a day since it is good for the economy?
pipoman
(16,038 posts)Democrats usually support things that reduce consumption.
FrodosPet
(5,169 posts)Teams of angry young men, focused on vandalism, could create a lot of economic activity in window replacement and building reconstruction.
Because, of course, ALL economic activity is GOOD economic activity.