I have diagnosed ADHD, so I clean my school binders about once a year. It’s my last day of school for this year today, decided to throw it all out, and was met with this horrendous amalgamation of tree pulp. Because the thousands we pay to DataHoover Google yearly for “laptops” and ransomware cloud storage means absolutely nothing. Can’t fucking wait to graduate.
Before full paperless, a college semester for me was a quarter of a small closet stack of paper. By the time I graduated it was a couple of notebooks and a tiny binder not larger than yours. Paper is super recyclable, paper is not what is killing the rainforest, if that is your concern. A single Google data center kills more and wastes more resource than all the tiny paper stacks of each student combined.
The paper is printed and transported, a data center meant for storing data handles much more data than that of a collage. You make a fair point, but the paper vs paperless debate isn’t that simple.
I recognize the complexities involved. But as long at data centers are fueled by a fossil based grid and use clean water for cooling, this amount of paper is not hurting more nor less. OP is fine, if they want to save trees the move is to stop corn and palm oil in products. That’s what is destroying forests.