Sitting by the window in a coffee shop, you always tend to let your gaze fall on whatever happens to be in front of it.

And on one particular day in a coffee shop, I chose to sit by a window with a view of the parking lot. And the asphalt of it was so badly cracked that it formed a good sized puddle of rain water. Of course, being in a parking lot, the surface of the puddle was streaked and polluted with oil and other engine fluids.

And yet, as polluted as it was, this puddle served as the main source of drinking water for a pigeon who drank from it just as you would water from a regular fountain.

The image alone is enough to stop you in your tracks.

So, here I was, thinking about the polluted puddle, the pigeon and, yes, the PDF while drinking my coffee (yes, more often than not, I do think about work outside of work). What does one thing have to do with the other?

Well, there are times when you just can’t help but notice the environmental damage involved with your day to day routine. So, you do what you can to help the environment. You convert to a being a habitual recycler, refrain from littering, commute by public transit, and find ways to conserve energy.

And after all that and a few more habit changes, what else can you do? Answer: use the PDF format.


Using the PDF for a Greener Society

One of the major environmental roles of the PDF is that it lowers the production of paper waste. While there are some document printings you can’t avoid, the PDF still decreases the negative environmental impacts of paper waste.

This is one of the motivations behind the paperless office. Businesses are deploying systems that use PDF technology to save on overhead costs, to work with other processing systems and, most importantly, to cut down on the amount of paper being consumed.

With the PDF, you can cut down on paper consumption when you need to print and fax a single sheet. One sheet will double the waste produced—both on your side and the receiver’s side.

Instead of printing up advertisement flyers and office forms, if companies use the PDF format, they would save on the amount of paper actually used to print and distribute them.

Or, if you read more than one newspaper on a daily basis, subscribe to them online instead. Why read and toss when you can read and delete?

Using the PDF may seem like something on a small scale, but, from an environmental and PDF perspective, it’s something that’ll produce big results. After all, the little things add up, right?

So next time you’re thinking about a greener society (and about cleaner drinking puddles), think PDF.