14 yr old middle school student discovers way for Gov't to save $370M a yr

quote:

---

A Pennsylvania middle school student figured out a way for federal and state governments to cut $370 million dollars from their combined budgets annually with one simple fix: changing the font on every single document they print.

---

quote:

---

After analyzing the most commonly used letters across four different typefaces and figuring out how much ink each used, Mirchandani found that by switching the school’s font exclusively to Garamond, it could reduce printer ink consumption by 24 percent and save $21,000 in printing costs every year.

---

quote:

---

After pulling sample pages and running the same test on documents from the Government Printing Office website, Mirchandani came up with the same result — switch to a font like Garamond with its thinner character strokes, and the federal government could cut almost 30 percent, or $136 million, from an annual $467 million spent on ink. If state governments adopted the same practice, another $234 million could be saved.

Government Printing Office Media and Public Relations Manager Gary Somerset described the student’s findings as ”remarkable,” but was unsure if the government would adopt the change, as the focus on saving printing costs has shifted to publishing documents exclusively online.

---