The Economics Of Paper Use And Its Implications To The Environment: A Case Study Of Sokoine University Of Agriculture, Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Paper is an office necessity for some essential tasks, but it has an environmental cost. The economics of paper use and its implications to the environment in Institutions of high learning, using Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) as a case study was investigated and reported in this work. The objectives of the study were to determine the annual amount of paper used for different purposes at SUA; to estimate the annual cost of buying paper at SUA and to estimate the annual number of trees exploited in relation to the amount of paper consumed at SUA. A cross sectional design was used to collect information from all four Campuses at SUA. Twenty seven offices directly dealing with administrative and academic matters were purposively selected as source of data used in this work. Data was also obtained from six prominent stationery shops operating at SUA. The major paper using activities, i.e. meetings and examinations were the sampling units. Data on the annual amount of paper used for various activities at SUA was collected by a paper survey tool and interviews administered to appropriate paper purchasers and users at SUA. Simple calculations were used to address the cost incurred annually to buy paper at SUA. The annual amount of trees exploited from the environment to make paper used by SUA was estimated using a conversion ratio developed by FAO (1997). The investigation found that SUA has a total annual paper consumption of about 42 785 kg of white print/copier paper, 1137.5 kg of coloured print/copier paper, 198.4 kg of ruled paper and 352 kg of manila paper. In addition, it was found that SUA used 160 000 Examination answer booklets in the year. The annual cost of buying paper at SUA was found to be about 288 590 000 TZS. Environmental cost was estimated at about 1027 trees exploited to suffice annual paper use at SUA. Interventions are suggested to reduce consumption of papers, financial and environmental cost at SUA such as paperless meeting, paper reuse, two side printing, sharing of documents electronically and awareness creation on paper use.