Eight Feet Per Student

At the end of the semester students are often left with literally tons of educational materials that they are not ever going to use again. I have saved or reused many of my unfilled notebooks and textbooks. However, I also know that the school has dumpsters brought in at the end of the semester to collect all of the "junk" that students no longer want. So for this weeks post I thought that it would be interesting to try and see how much material my classes might contribute towards waste. The first picture shows the printed papers, folders, and notebooks that I use between my five classes. It seems that at the semesters halfway point I have about 3 3/4 inches worth of paper and notes ( 3/4 inch per class). The second picture shows the required 8 1/4 inches of books for my classes (1 1/3 inches per class). Now multiply this stuff by 8 and I will have roughly gone through 8 feet of printed and paper materials by the end of my school career. Now most of this stuff wont be thrown out right away(the books will be resold, the potentially useful class notes will be saved for other classes), but eventually the books will become worn out and unsellable and I am graduating in a year so I might not need the notes anymore. This leads to the question is eight feet to much especially with the availability of electronic versions of most of these items.