I like trees. Especially during the fall when the leaves are changing colors and the sun is shining and the whole world has an iced tea-colored tinge to it. This is why last week, as fall descended on the cities, was a perfect time to try to save some trees. How serendipitous then, that Oct. 8 was a national day of action in protest of Office Depot’s paper-buying policy.

I got involved with the Paper Campaign last spring. The campaign is the joint effort of a number of environmental groups, including the Rainforest Action Network and Forest Ethics. These groups are using grassroots campaigning to convince Office Depot and Office Max to improve their paper-buying policies. Specifically, they want these corporations to stop buying paper made from old growth forests, to make 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper available in their stores and to have an average of 30 percent post-consumer recycled paper across their entire paper lines.

Here’s what makes this campaign so great: it’s all about sustainability. Unsustainable logging has already destroyed or degraded 95 percent of the old growth forests in the United States and 80 percent of old growth forests worldwide. The purpose of the Paper Campaign is to move toward increased recycled and alternative fibers for paper production. This shift would help decrease dependence on logging old growth forests. And by combining sustainable logging (which is, in the long term, better for everyone: paper producers, buyers and logging companies alike) with other alternative fiber sources, the need for logging in old growth forests will be eliminated.

It’s also a lot of fun. Last spring a bunch of Macalester students joined forces with Ecowatch, an environmental group from the University of Minnesota, and staged protests at a number of area Office Max stores dressed as trees. This past Wednesday we had a call-in to Office Depot CEO Bruce Nelson. A constant stream of students made their voices heard by tying up the phone lines for two hours.

If you’re interested in the Paper Campaign, or just want to be an environmentally responsible person, here are some good things to know: 1) more information about the campaign can be found at www.thepapercampaign.com; 2) the best nearby place to buy paper is Kinko’s. It’s a little more expensive, but much better for the earth; 3) there are lots of easy ways to help decrease paper use, like double-sided printing. Also watch for recycled notebooks, which will hopefully be available from Environmental Funk! in time for the spring semester.