According to reports there has been a big saving of about 25-percent at Supreme Court every year where about 2.4 crore paper-sheets are likely to be saved ever since Chief Justice of India, known to be a nature-lover, in April 2020 directed using both sides of paper-sheet with abnormal legal-sized paper changed by normal A-4 size paper with 1.5 spacing. Step will save 2800 tress and over one crore liter of water every year for paper used by Supreme Court alone. Just replacing legal-size paper with A-4 size paper with reduced margins and 1.5 spacing will reduce the paper usage by around 45 lakh annually at Supreme Court which has also done away with practice of printing and distribution of hard copies.
However Supreme Court should direct all High Courts and other sub-ordinate courts to compulsorily follow such a practice. Even Central and state governments including their public-sector-undertakings should adopt the same and require private offices to follow the practice to save heavily both in monetary and environmental aspects.
It is time to discontinue any further manufacture of legal-sized paper to reduce hardships of common people where they have to go to market for copying of documents printed on legal-sized paper where domestic photocopiers are normally equipped to handle only A-4 sized paper.
MADHU AGRAWAL