Sixth Grade Whiz Figures Out How to Save the Government Almost $400 Million by Changing Fonts

Figuring out how to save
taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars on ink is so easy a sixth
grader could do it. In fact, one did. 

Suvir Mirchandani, a student at a Pittsburgh middle school,
decided he wanted to look for ways to reduce waste at his school.
So for a science project, he measured how much ink was used in
creating enlarged versions of commonly used letters in his
teachers’ handouts. And then he measured how ink usage would be
reduced by using different fonts. 

Printer ink can be quite expensive—almost double the per ounce
price of Chanel No. 5 perfume, as Mirchandani tells CNN, which

first reported the story. 

It turned out his school district could reduce its annual ink
usage by 24 percent and save $21,000 a year by switching to
Garamond, a lighter font with thinner, less ink-heavy
strokes. 

After submitting his work to a journal for young researchers run
by Harvard grad students, Mirchandani was encouraged to expand his
research. 

The task was tougher. But the potential savings were much, much
bigger. CNN reports:

With an annual printing expenditure of $1.8 billion, the
government was a much more challenging task than his school science
project.

Suvir repeated his tests on five sample pages from documents on
the Government Printing Office website and got similar results
—change
the font, save money.

Using the Government Services Administration’s estimated annual
cost of ink — $467 million — Suvir concluded that if the federal
government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% — or
$136 million per year. An additional $234 million could be saved
annually if state governments also jumped on board, he
reported.

So will the Government Printing Office make a change? I wouldn’t
count on it:

Gary Somerset, media and public relations manager at the
Government Printing Office, describes Suvir’s work as “remarkable.”
But he was noncommittal on whether the GPO would introduce changes
to typeface, saying the GPO’s efforts to become more
environmentally sustainable were focused on shifting content to the
Web.

Sounds like Mirchandani may end up learning two lessons: With a
little thought, a smart person can find simple ways for the
government to save money—and the government doesn’t seem terribly
interested in pursuing them.