Reduce comes first

Information Age - February/March 2010

   Reduce comes first (PDF)

Want to reduce costs and your carbon footprint? The simple answer is to print less. By Bill Papas

The world’s carbon emissions are rising steadily and Australia remains one of the worst offenders, the recently published Global Carbon Project study found. The report says carbon emissions have grown by a total of 29 percent since 2000.

The CSIRO's Dr Michael Raupach, one of 30 scientists contributing to the report, told the ABC that among developed countries, Australia compares with the US – its emissions are almost flat at the moment – as well as countries like Canada and the EU states. “And in almost all of those countries we exceed their emissions rate,” he said.

However, as companies struggle to survive the economic downturn, reducing costs is the primary concern and our environmental impact is pushed down the priority list. But what if your organisation could reduce its costs and its carbon footprint at the same time? According to IDC, printing costs account for between one and three percent of any company's expenditure. In cash terms, that means the average company prints off 1100 pages per employee per year, costing that company between $500 and $1500 per employee.

The good news is, while ‘paperless’ may be an unachievable ideal, ‘less paper’ is not that hard a nut to crack, especially for businesses. Reducing your print output is not only a far better environmental outcome than recycling: it’s also a powerful way to reduce costs.

Many companies have no idea about how much they are printing or how many printers they have. Staff from different departments such as human resources or finance can go out and purchase a new printer for under $100 thinking it’s cheap, but of course the running costs including paper and toner make it less than great value.

Similarly, it’s difficult for companies to get an overall view on much paper they’re actually using. This is where managed print service companies like Upstream can help, in providing a no-cost audit of a business’s entire print environment.

Audits typically cover a span of time and will help you understand not only print volumes, but also metrics like the optimal ratio of devices to users and current total cost of output (including service and consumables). An audit will also identify what types of documents you’re printing, how those documents flow through your business and whether there are any problems or inefficiencies in that process.

Top five tips to reduce paper consumption

1. Smart scanning Count the number of filing cabinets in your office. If you have more than one, you’re probably printing too much. Ask yourself what the primary purpose of having the paper is. Is it to be stored or moved around the organisation? If it’s either, it can be scanned and an electronic copy sent to your files. Keeping these copies electronically can help you reduce the cost of physical storage space, as well as making it easier to access information quickly.

2. Try e-forms Do away with pre-printed stationery (such as invoices and letterhead) and replace with electronic forms. One advantage of doing this is that you can quickly make updates without having to bin outdated documents. You can even organise to have commonly used forms reside electronically on your printer or copier, so that anyone in the business who needs to use a specific kind of form automatically has the right version. Consider redesigning forms so they fit on fewer pages.

3. Lose the snail mail Convert frequently posted documents (such as application forms) to PDF so they can be emailed instead. Many business management software packages also enable you to send your invoices and statements electronically.

4. Electronic faxing If you are still using analog (phone line) fax machines, you’re printing more than you need to. Electronic faxing, offered as a feature in most print/copy multifunction devices reduces paper usage. It also cuts your phone transmission costs and the amount of electricity used by a stand-alone fax machine. If you must fax a hard-copy document, modify or eliminate the fax cover sheet. You can replace the fax cover sheet with a text box or rubber stamp that has space for the transmission details, or you can note the details in an email that accompanies a scan to electronic fax transmission.

5. Duplexing and multi-up Looking for an easy way to cut your paper use in half? Duplexing (printing on both sides of the page) and multi-up (printing more than one page per sheet) are standard features on most modern print devices. Few businesses take advantage of these capabilities unless they are configured as default options. You can even set up the defaults to vary depending on the type of document you’re printing.

Every 100 reams of recycled of f ice paper that is printed double-sided saves two trees, more than a tonne of green house gas and almost a cubic metre of landfill space compared to 100 reams of paper that is not recycled or printed double-sided. Other issues It’s also important to think about reducing the amount of toner you use in your organisation. As with paper, the most environmentally sensitive approach for toner management is to reduce consumption rather than recycling. Many cartridges can be returned to the manufacturers for their manufacturing or component recovery programs. The remaining cartridges are broken down and processed to recycle their component parts into new products. This process recovers materials such as aluminium, steel, plastics, toner and ink.

Reducing overall use of paper, toner, equipment and energy is the most powerful environmental and financial strategy you can choose – far more effective than recycling. Surprisingly, it’s actually the easiest as well.

Through aligning the right device for the job, optimising and rationalising the existing printing fleet, using intelligent document management solutions and output options that are already available in today’s modern devices, it’s not difficult to reduce the volume of paper and associated resources by 50 percent or more.

Case study: ITW Proline

ITW Proline, Australia’s leading supplier of fasteners and hardware to retail customers such as Bunnings and Mitre 10, recognised that its printing requirements were steadily increasing every year, resulting in higher operating costs and placing a significant burden on the administration of printing devices.

As the company grew over the years, ITW Proline bought more printers and spent more money running them. It eventually needed more toners, more paper and importantly more time maintaining the devices. The administrative headache just kept getting bigger.

Taking over the management of the current document output fleet, Upstream optimised the number of printers, introduced multifunction devices and reduced personal use devices, also providing a single point of contact for improved visibility and cost control.

Additionally, Upstream installed its environmental tracking and reporting software called U-Track at ITW Proline. U-Track monitors printing levels and provides detailed reports on the equivalent number of trees used, the amount of greenhouse gases (carbon) released and how much energy is expended in the production of printed output by every user across the company.

The administrative workload maintaining the printing devices has been significantly reduced. Staff can now actually get on with the primary responsibility of managing the ICT systems and resources. Sharing information with ITW Proline staff on exactly how much paper output each user generates has drawn attention to printing habits and programs to encourage changing behaviour have been developed.

Full training on how to use the new printers, including scanning and duplexing functions, was provided. There are also plans to apply solutions towards improving and automating document workflow processes for ITW Proline, with the objective of reducing carbon emissions further.