Green Teaching with Custom Flash Drives

One of the many benefits to using educational flash drives preloaded with syllabi and other class handouts comes in the form of demonstrating environmental responsibility. How many worksheets and textbooks have been printed, outlining the necessity of reducing one’s carbon footprint? Of course, such instruction is no longer reserved for those enrolled in environmental studies programs, just like laptops are no longer the exclusive territory of the IT major set.

We’ve come a long way from the caricatured 1960s tree-hugging hippies to the current mainstream emphasis on taking responsibility for our carbon footprints. Ironically, many of the studies regarding carbon emissions are printed on and read from—you guessed it!—paper. Considering its total life cycle, paper is one of the daily-use items with the highest greenhouse gas emission.

Some improvements can only come through over-hauled industrial standards. Paper mills can reduce their emissions, paper suppliers can work to lessen the impact of forestry practices where virgin wood is necessarily extracted, and recycling systems can be more efficient in allowing more paper to be resurrected for fresh use. However, if the educational community changes its practices to reduce the demand for paper, that will go a long way, too.

One of the proposed answers to this dilemma is to search out low carbon papers. Using recycled paper is only one of many ways that we can help reduce the impact of paper on the global climate. Another helpful practice is to re-use paper that has been printed on only one side. Particularly when extra copies have been inadvertently made, those papers can be printed on the reverse side for further use. Tests can be taken on a separate sheet, allowing the pages with questions to be used for multiple sections of a class as well as for next semester’s students.

Another answer is to provide electronic versions of educational materials formerly supplied as hard copies. Some teachers may have already been doing this through password-protected websites or sending mass e-mails. Making educational resources available online sometimes requires converting files and working with a network administrator, though, and collecting e-mail addresses can be cumbersome for teachers and seen as privacy infringements from some students. Some students may also lack internet access or have less-than-optimal internet service in their area.

The answer to those dilemmas is simple: custom, pre-loaded flash drives. These devices are no bigger than the average person’s thumb, but they can store a large amount of data. CFgear can provide options for large or small data-storage needs. Thousands of schools are already experiencing the benefits of using our custom flash drives for educational purposes. While the inside of these devices can include smart data preloads, the exteriors hold many options, as well. Plastic, metal, and wood varieties all come with or without caps, all with color logo imprinting available.

If you’re serious about doing more than telling your students that they should reduce their carbon footprints, and let us help you show them how: Use our custom flash drives, this school year.