The Ponderings of a Big Foot Buddha

2003-04-03 - 6:46 a.m.

Toilet Paper & Economics

Have you ever noticed that when a company is new & shiny all the washrooms have the good toilet paper (TP)? Given a bit of time plus a more restrictive economy one of the first things to change is the quality of the TP.
Eventually the TP quality hits rock bottom and you suffer break through after break through.
It’s funny because with a bit of thought there are so many better ways to save money in a company and still keep the high quality TP and retain high bathroom morale for your workforce. Using the company I work for as an example I can see four ways right off we can reduce our expenditures by more than we spend on TP.

1.   Our buildings balmy climate control temperature is set at 76ºF. Drop that by two or four degrees would still keep the building nice and warm but reducing heating costs in the winter by a great deal. Especially considering that our gas prices here took a 25% hike this winter.

2.   Paper waste in our area of the company is astounding. My department is Engineering, Design & Drafting. Roll on the big printers get changed once or twice a week (500 foot rolls) but there are many prints that are made and never claimed by the person that made them and at the end of the week they get thrown away. People continually make copies or originals on the laser printers only to write one or two words on it and then throw it away. Get code keyed copiers and have our network track printing usage back to workstations and/or job codes. Once the paper costs start showing up on job budgets instead of the general building expenses project managers will be forcing the paper costs to go down in order to maintain their budgets.

3.   Lights are left on 24 hours a day. I’m talking hundreds upon hundreds of fluorescence fixtures on our floor alone all double bulbed too. Plus our cubicles all have three more fixtures each, some have four. Although these we can switch on and off.

4.   Our company has water coolers and coffee machines located through my building (we have 4 buildings) and at each cooler/coffee station is a cup dispenser. The mound of cups in all the garbage cans at the end of each day is amazing. Eliminating the cup dispensers and/or having the coffee machines switched a vending style would seem a good thing to do to reduce waste.


Hmm seems like a quest is in the offing. "The Great TP Quest"

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