Students have taken to paying bills online and sending e-greetings instead of Hallmark cards, but the trend toward a paperless world hasn't quite carried into the classroom. Though more course materials are available online now than in years past, millions more pages are being printed, too, creating an environmental conundrum.

Student printing has been on the rise since 2001, according to Ruth Addis, the University's interim director for Internet and Technology Services. University students printed more than 26 million pages last year - a number that Addis said will likely hit 27 million by the end of this year. Just under 20 million pages were printed in 2003.

Along with increases in printing, other green-conscious students have complained about bulky coursepacks that contain unnecessary materials, can't be reused and are often only printed on one side of the page.

When CTools, the University's web-based system for coursework, was introduced to campus in fall of 2005, it gave professors the chance to replace bulky coursepacks with materials hosted online. John Williams, the executive producer of Digital Media Commons, which oversees CTools, said about 85 percent of faculty and more than 99 percent of students use the website. He said its simple interface encourages professors to post more materials than students need. As a result, he said, students end up printing more than necessary.

"It's hard for students to discriminate between what's essential and what isn't," Williams said. "Students want to be prepared for classes, so they end up printing more than would be offered in a traditional coursepack."

Addis said she thinks the spike in student printing over the years can be attributed at least in part to the convenience of CTools. About 35 percent of all students, she said, print more than their allocated 400 pages each semester.

Though student printing has escalated since pre-CTools days, Williams said students can use the site to make environmentally responsible decisions when it comes to printing.

"CTools at least gives us the option to work with less paper," Williams said. "If we decided that it was a priority as individuals or as a campus to use less paper, we'd at least have one tool that would help us do that."

Though ITCS made the switch to recycled paper in all its printers earlier this year,

Addis said the adverse environmental effects of printing go beyond the paper. She said students should consider "the bigger green impact" they have each time they print out pages upon pages of PowerPoint slides or supplemental reading.

"When people think of printing, they often think of just the paper as being the 'green' thing," Addis said. "But it's also about the electricity that printers use, the manufacturing of those printers, and the staff driving around to service them, too."

When campus copy shops like Excel Test Preparation have lines that stretch out the door before every semester, it's clear that some faculty still want students to use coursepacks.

Economics Prof. Alan Deardorff said in an e-mail interview that he posts readings on CTools for students but also compiles a coursepack for convenience.

"Trees are very much a renewable resource, and for making paper, they are pretty much grown like a crop." Deardorff said. "If that were not the case, then I suppose I might have some concern, but I do believe that for the majority of students, paper copies of readings are a necessary part of education."

Many students try to save money by printing materials on their own, but Norm Miller of Excel Test Preparation said that by the time students download, print, and bind their own materials, the price becomes comparable to that of a store-bought coursepack.

Miller said Excel has tried double-sided printing before, but found the practice to be more costly than single-sided printing.

LSA junior Corinne Fulton, who said she bought a 500-page coursepack for one of her classes last semester, took issue with Excel's one-sided printing policy.

"You end up with 500 sheets of paper that are printed only on one side," Fulton said. "Not only is that ridiculous to carry around, but it's twice as wasteful as it should have been." LSA sophomore Alex Bajcz said he prefers when course information is posted on CTools so he can print only the material that's necessary, and use both sides of the page when doing so. He also noted that coursepacks aren't durable enough to be resold.

"In that respect, they're way less efficient than textbooks," Bajcz said in an e-mail interview.