Joined on 09-19-2000
San Francisco
TechSoup Member
Here are 5 things we recommend that nonprofits and libraries do to reduce their paper use and save money.
1.
Assess and track your organization’s paper use
2. Change printer and copier settings and habits: start duplexing
3. Collaborate using electronic documents
4. Distribute annual reports and marketing collateral electronically
5. Buy recycled content paper
What do you think? Are these the right 5 things? What have been your experiences with reducing paper in your office? What are your hurdles?
I think these are all good suggestions!
One of the main challenges I see involves the fact that many people are more comfortable doing things on paper (the good ol' fashioned way) vs. switching over to digital solutions. For example, you've got people who use Outlook to keep track of their tasks and projects vs. people who will only do this using their paper-based planner.
While I definitely think a lot can be done to reduce our consumption of paper, I think there will always be reasons for people to stick with paper. But at least it's good to know that for people addicted to paper, there are still many good things they can do to cut down usage and save money. Your points #2 and #5 are good examples.
I would best describe myself as a hybrid "low-tech/high-tech" professional. Low-tech being paper solutions; high-tech being electronic solutions. For some things, using paper works best for me, such as keeping track of daily to-do's, appointments, calls to make, etc... But I also started using a voice recorder for when it's not convenient for me to write things down.
For other things, such as managing all the numerous sub-tasks and milestones for all my projects, the electronic route works best for me. Projects and priorities are always changing. I find it a lot easier to juggle around and keep track of my tasks using Microsoft OneNote. It gets messy trying to do this on paper!
My 2 cents.
Yann
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
There needs to be sensitive to the project also.
The "green guerilla" should not pounce on the trainer making one sided copies for a class, until there is an understanding how the documents will be used in the training.
Dave
Joined on 02-19-2003
San Francisco
Dave,
Maybe we ought to add environmental enforcement to the list. How does the 'green guerilla' function in your shop?
-jim
Joined on 10-24-2005
Nairobi
Anna
This would probably not be on the top of my list but back when I was a network administrator I ran a print monitoring program for a month and it was very instructive. The program provided a report showing how many print jobs had been run by each user, how big they were and which printer they had used. For each printer it showed the total number of print jobs and pages printed.
This exercise is not and should not be used as a way of snooping on staff but can be a valuable tool in planning and resource allocation by monitoring printer usage.
Pete
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
Fortunately, we do not have too many guerillas in our shop. Most of the green incentive I've seen was grass roots, where a branch brought in recycling bins, and end users think about killing a tree before printing.
That bottom up effort then was picked up from a corporate level to see what we could leverage and initiate for other branches.
One area that I was able to effect change was a 3 ream of paper monthly report that had to be printed "for the auditors" I started to electronically archive the print jobs and not print the reports, then handed the auditors a CD ROM with electronic copies of all the monthly reports when they came in for the yearly audit. This even let them more thoroughly scour the data as they could electronically search the report instead of going through reams and reams of paper.
I've also set standards that all printers will have duplexing and multi page per page printing capability. It isn't easy to change habits, but when the tools do not easily support change it is even harder to reduce paper usage.
Dave
Joined on 09-19-2000
San Francisco
TechSoup Member
Pete,
I like your idea of monitoring and reporting print use for those shops that can do it. Do you remember which software you used to monitor printing? Was it proprietary or free-ware? We are considering doing the same thing in house, but haven't yet begun the research to figure out how to do it.
Once you had the data, how did you sensitively share it and how did you use it to get people to change?
Dave,
I love the idea of tracking down needless paper reports and providing the data electronically. If you don't mind, I will post that as one of our
mini-tips.
Joined on 06-09-2003
Davenport, Iowa USA
I'll add a little information on how I archive these reports.
Instead of printing the report, I capture the report as a text file (.txt extension) that can be opened in Notepad or other text application. In my case there are two long reports and some other supporting information files.
Each month I collect the set of report text files, and create a .zip file that contains the report files. I use a naming convention of "YYMMDD Bank report Month" So October's report would be "081020 Bank Report October.zip" These zip files store in one directory and when sorted by name will be in chronological order. In another set of directories (one directory of each report set) I keep a copy of all the files unzipped. This is available for anyone who needs to view the reports, the zip files I keep sanctified (kept apart from) incase anything happens to the other copies.
This doesn't solve all non repudiation and data integrity issues, but hopefully would make it difficult to change official records.
Dave
Joined on 10-24-2005
Nairobi
Anna
I used some commercial software called paper cut that was available on a one month trial but I now see from their web site that they also have a free tool (http://www.papercut.com/products/free_software/print_logger/).
Once I had the data I embarked on an education campaign for the staff most of which covered the points in your list but the data let me highlight particular points that needed attention and tailor general advice to the organisation.
Some people might have guessed who I was directing my comments to but I took care not to name names, or scapegoat any one. I was limited to the one month free trial but it would have been interesting to continue longer to see if habits changed
Pete
Something that I have done for years is use the clean backside of any paper that will run through my printer. I rarely use clean fresh paper for things that scratch paper will do for. Do-it yourself recycling.
Last night, I had a dream that I was trying to take a note on the top of an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb...when I woke up I decided that was carrying recycling too far. :-)
Best wishes,
Joined on 03-02-2004
Ypsilanti, MI
TechSoup Member
For a long time in my accounting department we have previously used paper in the printer. I do have to be careful of what is printed on the reverse side, since it could include confidential information. I have two piles of scape paper in my office, one with more confidential information and one with non-confidential information.
A problem that we have is how to reduce the paperwork required for back up of checks that will pass all of the grant requiremnts especially Federal Requirements since we have a lot of Federal Money. We have to pass A-133 audits. I would like to have suggestions on that if anyone has them.
We do have a duplexing printer which is used a lot. I also manually duplex some on my printer when it needs to be on new paper. I have gone electronic on communication as much as possible including asking funders if they would rather have the audit and A-133 audit in electronic format. Some would rather have it that way as it does not then require the physical storage of the audits.
We managed to save a lot of paper (by reducing the number of page-prints) unintentionally as a by-product of consolidating the number of printers we have on site - we were not actually trying to save paper... a few years ago most network users had a printer in their office or nearby. A lot of these were inkjets or small lasers (very expensive to run) so all printers were replaced by a much smaller number of multi-function photocopiers (cheaper per page) - 34 printers were replaced by 11 photocopiers.
The unintended outcome was that because the copiers are now on average further from each persons desk, most people print less. Our overall monthly page print count has reduce by 32% suggesting a lot of the printing done previously was unnecessary.
I think if you give someone a printer they will print... take it away, and perhaps they find it was less necessary than they thought :-)
Joined on 09-19-2000
San Francisco
TechSoup Member
Sasha, I love your dream. Thanks for the great laugh! I think a good sense of humor is part of what will make any greening program more successful. -Anna
I just read your dream as well Sasha... starting to get a bit worried about you - :-)
Don,
I just read your dream as well Sasha... starting to get a bit worried about you
Tell me there is a technology that allows us to use those old light bulbs in some way... my closet is filled with them, and I can't bear to throw them away... but my friends look up into the light fixtures to see that I am using those weird curly fluorescents (no good at all for note taking}. :-)