This had included saving "18 miles of paper every night" by only using electronic communication with branches.
A second phase of the N.I.H. study, which is already under way, will involve 5,000 tracings — or about 20 miles of paper.
At the end of the performance the night I was there, when miles of paper, oceans of sound and storms of flashing light rained down, lots of people were on their feet dancing, waving, shouting.
But a large cocoonlike structure by Monika Grzymala made of four miles of paper tape wrapped around three columns in the gallery could be taken by an innocent viewer for sculpture.
Casting around for a dissertation topic, the student, Eugene Aserinsky, decided to hook sleepers up to an early version of an electroencephalogram machine, which scribbled across half a mile of paper each night.
Not only do you get the chance to support a good project, you won't be adding to the 227,000 or so miles of wrapping paper predicted to be used this Christmas when you then upcycle it as wrapping paper.
The British charity Waste Watch, which advised holiday shoppers to "avoid goods that involve unnecessary packaging," estimates that one billion Christmas cards and 32 square miles of wrapping paper will be thrown away in Britain.
By the end of last month, more than 1,200 employees were roving the 1.2 million square feet of this distribution center, where one packing area has been designed to handle more than 90,000 packages at once and more than 14 miles of wrapping paper are held on industrial-size rollers.
And supplies had arrived: red envelopes and cream-colored gift cards, glossy cardboard gift boxes and matching red wrapping paper, miles of ivory-colored polyester ribbon, bales of periwinkle blue tissue.
In 12 years that 110-mile-high stack of paper will fit on a single hard drive in your shirt pocket.
