sustainability at Southern:

Purchasing and administrative services

Reducing paper use is a priority at Southern. Paper is expensive, resource and pollution intensive to produce, and in many cases, easily replaced with electronic recordkeeping and communication. In addition to efforts in academic departments, administrative and business offices are reducing paper use impacts by:

• Consolidating and electronically tracking purchase orders, records, invoices, and contracts. This saves many thousands of sheets of paper per year, and saves on postage and waste disposal costs as well.
• Southern's 2009 purchases of office supplies which contain recycled content rose to 23% overall, up from 15% in 2008. The national average for universities similar in size to Southern is 15%.
• Most of the office supply paper purchased by Southern contains 30% post-consumer recycled content.