Suvir Mirchandani found that millions of dollars a year could be saved by his school district and government agencies, just by switching to Garamond font.
When he compared the price of ink, which is more than a bottle of perfume, and the number of documents printed each year, the teenager realized he could cut waste and save money.
The idea for his science fair project on type fonts came when he noticed he was being given a large number of handouts at his Dorseyville Middle School.
And, while everyone tries to recycle paper and print on both sides to cut waste, there had been little research into how to reduce the amount of ink used.
'Ink is two times more expensive than French perfume by volume,' Suvir told CNN.
To find a way to cut costs and ink usage, he collected samples of his school's handouts and looked at the most commonly used letters - e, t, a, o and r.
Discovery: Suvir Mirchandani has found a way to save the government millions of dollars a year
To be sure of his findings, he printed out large sample letters in the fonts and weighed them, before concluding that Garamond, with its more slender type face, was the most cost-effective.
The teenager calculated that if his school district switched to the typeface it could save $21,000 a year.
Savings: Switching from fonts like Times New Roman, above, to Garamond, below, cuts ink use and print costs
Homework: Suvir came up with the idea for a science fair project at Dorseyville Middle School
The decision to apply it to the government came when a journal founded by Harvard graduates challenged Suvir to try the model on a larger scale.
Sarah Fankhauser, one of the founders of the Journal for Emerging Investigators, said: 'We were so impressed. We really could really see the real-world application in Suvir's paper.'
She added that the peer reviewers of the journal of middle and high school students were keen to find out what further savings the discovery could make.
The government has a $1.8 billion printing bill and, when Suvir reproduced his test on five sample pages from its printing website, he found they could also save money simply by changing the font.
The Government Services Administrations spends $467 million a year on ink, leading Suvir to conclude that if the federal government switched to Garamond it could save $136 million a year.
And, if the state government switched, an extra $234 million could be saved, making a combined saving of $370.
Gary Somerset, of the Government Printing Office, described the work as 'remarkable' but told CNN the office was focused more on switching to digital rather than changing the font.
Suvir has not been deterred however, and hopes his discovery will be adopted.
'I recognize it's difficult to change someone's behavior,' he said. 'I definitely would love to see some actual changes and I'd be happy to go as far as possible to make that change possible.'
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