I recently posted Being Green: Recycle & Reuse after reading how successful some companies like HP and Xerox had been with their programs for recycling theirs and other vendors' information technology products or reusing consumables such as printer cartridges. The inspiration for this came from the Bits blog of the New York Times and the original post had some very good comments from the readers.
One comment in particular, from Joey, caught my attention when it discussed his environmental and cost-saving efforts at a company that focused on reducing the amount of paper that is generated:
"[Joey] led a project that saved one division of a huge multinational (think Fortune Five) over $2.3 million over two years and (more importantly) reduced the amount of paper we generated enterprise-wide by over 53% year-over-year.
How? We pushed technology (like network-connected multifunction devices which can scan, copy, print and fax all in one box) and training out to the business to help us eliminate some documents, keep some documents in electronic form rather than printing them and transfer other documents to electronic form where they could be accessed, sent and destroyed without generation or disposal of any paper.
The challenge? The main obstacle was prying peoples’ distributed printers from their fingers. People feared learning a new way of doing things, and were comfortable with having a printer within arm’s reach (or only a few steps away). The amount of consumables used in the print-fax-discard process alone was unbelievable. The key to sustainably changing behavior was in removing these old printers and copiers from the facilities where they had resided (in some cases) for decades. Once people learned how the new multifunction devices worked acceptance was virtually universal."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated that office paper is the third largest category of paper waste, after corrugated cardboard and newspapers, so it comes as no surprise that they launched their own agency wide Paper-Less Office Campaign in 2004, pledging to "Break the Paper Chain" using a variety of methods, including duplex copying and electronic communication.
The government overall had previously attempted to implement a paper-less office campaign and I recall them only being marginally successful. I remember making the shift to electronic forms while in the Coast Guard, but that only reduced our dependence on pre-printed forms; we still generated just as much paperwork. The most significant change was the introduction of electronic manuals to replace the library that was maintained in our administrative offices.
I've been seeing more and more multi-function printers show up in the workplace, but don't know if they're being used to their full potential to minimize the amount of paper that is being generated. As Joey mentioned above, the hardest part will be to change user behavior and to take the time to train them on how use this technological marvel. What are you doing in the workplace to reduce the amount of paper you generate? Has anyone taken the time to calculate how much you're spending on paper, toner, printer maintenance/purchases, document storage and document disposal? The next time you need to purchase a business-class network printer, see what multi-function device might fulfill the same requirements.
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