In the commercials, airline pilots do it at the terminal; musicians do it backstage; hair stylists do it in the back; and Mum is doing it wrong. It’s about time I recycled too.
I’ve been taking my coke and juice bottles back to the depot for years. All those nickels add up quickly, and for years it has been the closest I’ve got to a savings plan.
But now, it’s time to encourage others to take up a habit of mine: recycling type.
The internet, email and text messaging use up a lot of resources – electricity, time and the one that we’ve had for almost as long as time, the alphabet. There are only twenty six letters and we need to learn to use them wisely.
Every time you backspace (oops, there I go again) those letters get lost, never to be seen again. Never to grace the screen or page again. Gone. Forever (ahh, another c bites the dust).
What a waste.
Instead of simply DELETING, try recycling those letters – copy and paste. Take the letters you were going to doom to the waste basket and make them useful again. Instead of backspacing over an entire word (SHOCK!) simply use your arrow keys to go back to where you need to edit.
Education is the key here. Learning to type with a simple online typing course will save you millions of letters in the longterm. Consider investing in a keyboard that enables or at least helps you to type more accurately. Ergonomic keyboards make the task easier on your wrists and elbows, reducing the effects of repetitive stress. As a tendinitis sufferer, I value my curved keyboard a lot more than it’s cash value.
Reduce, reuse and recycle, and do your part in helping the language environment. We want it to be around for our children and their children and their children to enjoy.
If we don’t care for the alphabet, who will?
