The formal report has been the bane of my existence for the past few weeks. Coordinating with the company to get the information required, obtaining survey results and doing secondary research has been quite difficult. Admittedly, I am currently driving across the country and trying to complete the formal report at the same time as other work and school commitments. It was/is surprisingly difficult to obtain secondary data on paper wastage and reduction techniques. It seems to e a very underexplored area of waste in general. Further, it was interesting to learn that less than 10% of all paper that is “recycled” can actually be turned into recycled material. Quite shocking to know how big of an industry paper is in general and how little has been done to reduce paper waste in our modern society. I wonder if this will become more of a mainstream issue in the coming years now that we have technology that would allow most businesses to go paperless. Further to this, it seems that paper reduction techniques are not talked about or publicized heavily. Even when offices/business go “paperless” there seems to be little announcement about it.
The peer review process is also a challenge. I find it difficult to think that the peer review will be reviewed by the boss and not the person that wrote the report as I don’t do this in my professional practice and have never done it before in my academic life either. This process is time consuming and frustrating to go through every aspect of someone’s report and identify strengths and weaknesses. Though a tedious process, I can see the value of this in heavy writing based industries such as news reporting and in report writing in business. I question how many companies actually use this technique though because when I am waiting on reports from companies I want them ASAP and the employees are usually so busy that I doubt they do this opting instead to accept minor mistakes in an effort for timeliness. With the younger generation wanting everything to be almost immediate, there is little time for tedious peer review processes.
Enclosure: ENGL301 Formal Report Draft