How To Reduce Paper Waste In The Office

May 17, 2018

Recent Earth Day celebrations brought to light a variety of campaigns to reduce paper waste in the office. Many enterprises waste time and money controlling and managing documents, but do you know where they would be if they could just get visibility into their paper-based processes?

Looking at the context of document and process inefficiencies is the key to prioritizing and improving document management workflows and reducing paper waste. DocuWare produced a useful blog providing recommendations for how to stop document mishandling and create a list of processes inside your enterprise to start digitizing immediately, thereby reducing paper consumption in the office.

Edit Before You Print To Reduce The Waste

Make sure to give the print command to your computer only when it’s the final version of your document to eliminate re-prints.

Set Office Printers and Copier Defaults to Two-Sided Printing

Many offices have seen significant reductions in paper usage by turning on the duplex feature by default.  When your output automatically prints on two sides, studies indicate you can reduce your paper usage by up to 30%.  This not only saves costs directly but has a significant environmental impact by reducing tree consumption.

Recycle Shredded Paper

Shredded office paper may also be repurposed as packaging filler for particular applications. Take the extra step to recycle your shredded paper.

Adopt Digital Document Solutions To Reduce Paper Consumption

Convert paper-based processes into digital ones. Digital document solutions not only increase a firm’s productivity but, it can also help save paper. It also makes searching through documents easier. DocuWare works the way you do.

DocuWare office automation solutions deliver smart digital workflow and document control, archival and retrieval of documents that set a new pace for worker productivity and business performance. DocuWare’s zero-compromise cloud and on-premise services are a recognized best-fit for digitizing, automating and transforming key processes. Organizations gain new levels of efficiency, transparency, and control in their business, while significantly reducing unnecessary expenditure.

It provides the user with a clean and easy-to-use interface. All documents are readily available to preview, make changes with annotations or share them quickly with other team members.

Whether you have five users or 5,000+, PaperCut is the perfect solution to eliminate waste, encourage responsible printing behavior, and make users/departments accountable for their print usage.

From simple tracking and monitoring of print jobs, to integrating BYOD printing or advanced custom job management, PaperCut can be up and running in minutes.

PaperCut tracks all user printing activity to your local and network printers, plus any multi-function systems that you may have. PaperCut also captures any of the walk-up copying, scanning and faxing activity that occurs at the console of the multi-functional device. There’s also a multitude of standard and custom reports to provide a summary or specific details by user, group, department or branch.

In a standard printing environment, a user’s jobs are sent directly to the printer for immediate printing. This results in wasted paper and toner when printing is forgotten and not collected. It also presents a security risk if those forgotten jobs were sensitive or confidential.

PaperCut Find ME print release provides a simple solution that places jobs in a holding state until the user authenticates and releases the job at the printer. Users may select individual jobs to release or have jobs automatically print after successful authentication. They can also delete any print jobs that are no longer required which helps eliminate print waste and saves paper!

Toshiba’s Hybrid Technology

Toshiba introduces the World’s 1^st copier with erasable toner and conventional black and white toner – the Toshiba e-Studio 3508LP Hybrid System. This hybrid technology combines conventional monochrome printing or the ability to select erasable toner allowing you to reuse paper over and over again – a great way to reduce paper wastage.

Toshiba’s hybrid copiers’ rules-based printing feature enables users to select toner setting defaults based on the application. Now printing temporary items, such as emails or documents for proofreading, may be designated in erasable toner (at 35 pages-per-minute) to conserve paper. While more permanent documents such as receipts, insurance, and on-boarding forms may be designated for monochrome output (at 35 pages-per-minute). Additionally, the product’s e-BRIDGE™ Paper Reuse Report summarizes paper reduction and provides additional insight into an organization’s environmental impact.

For more information on printers that help reduce paper waste in the office, contact us.

Plant a Tree Program

OE is pleased to introduce our New “Plant a Tree Program“. The world wants less paper and so do we. From offering our clients printers that can erase ink already printed on paper, to using software to reduce paper, we are doing our part for a more sustainable future.

With this in mind, we have partnered with Tree Canada who will plant a tree for every device sold.

For more information on how OE Canada’s Plant a Tree Program, contact us.