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One should (9) .......... believe that youth precludes one from making a meaningful contribution to environmental causes. Consider, (10) .......... , the case of Suvir Mirchandani, a fourteen-year-old student from Pittsburgh, whose environmental awareness exceeded that of most of his peers. He demonstrated remarkable initiative, persistence and ingenuity in his approach to reducing institutional waste. His school, like the vast majority, generated enormous quantities of worksheets, notices and correspondence. Many people complained (11) .......... the volume of paper being consumed, but Suvir went one (12) .......... further: he began to wonder whether a change of typeface might reduce the school's ink usage, and set about identifying the most economical font.
He isolated the five most frequently occurring characters in the English language, enlarged them, printed each onto card and cut them (13) .......... — repeating the exercise across four common fonts: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. By weighing each letter, he calculated that switching to the finer strokes of Garamond alone could reduce ink consumption by 24%, representing a potential saving of $21,000 per year.
(14) .......... further reflection, Suvir extended his analysis, estimating that a comparable switch could save the US Federal Government $136 million annually. His proposals attracted considerable media attention, though subsequent scrutiny qualified his bolder assertions. Critics noted that transitioning to paperless communication would conserve (15) .......... ink and paper. Nevertheless, his work succeeded in directing public focus (16) .......... the transformative potential of a single, modest change — a remarkable achievement for any teenager.