5 Easy Tips to an Environmentally Friendly Office

Posted on April 17, 2016

Did you know the average worker produces 10,000 sheets of paper each year? Living in a world of increasingly wireless networks and connected devices—from laptops to tablets, to smartphones and even smartwatches—many organizations, big to small, are surprisingly still dependent upon paper, including the technology and energy required to produce paper documents.

As we approach Earth Day, the day set aside each year to show support for environmental protection, worldwide, we want to share 5 tips to help you reduce the consumption of energy and materials required to produce paper documents.

1. Install a Managed Print Services Program

Many offices continue to operate with a fleet of single function devices such as printers, scanners or fax machines. Most often, these single-function devices can be replaced with multi-functional, or all-in-one, devices that print, scan and send/receive faxes.

2. Mandate Efficient Print Settings

Most modern multi-functional devices are equipped with control mechanisms, or are can be updated with software, to mandate efficient printing settings such as forced black and white printing, draft quality printing and two-sided printing. These print settings can immediately reduce the amount of consumables used to print documents.

3. Reduce Abandoned Prints with Secure Print Release

Statistics have shown that over 40% of printing is unnecessary, which is supported by other reports that one-in-five print outs is never picked up, left abandoned—which can also lead to compliance issues (but that’s another blog topic). Simple software installations that require a badge-swipe or code entry to release print jobs can reduce abandoned prints and wasted printing.

4. Implement Document Management 

Electronic storage and retrieval of information is the ideal strategy to help reduce consumables and energy related to printing. Most office technology companies can assist in designing and implementing an effective document management strategy to ensure documents are stored, backed-up and easy to retrieve digitally.

5. Select Energy Efficient Equipment

Today’s office equipment, like most technology, continually improves to consume less energy, go to sleep when not in use for set periods of time and other features to help reduce your energy consumption. If your multifunctional devices are a bit aged, upgrade to save on energy costs.

Going green in your office is easier than you think. Your local office technology dealer can help you select the most energy and cost efficient equipment and software for your business.

Chastity Fox, Director of Advertising & Marketing

Chastity has more than 15 years of experience developing strategies, tactics and executing projects to help businesses grow. She is a digital marketing and technology enthusiast, leveraging this to boost productivity and move businesses forward. A graduate of MTSU (and also completed coursework at NYU), Chastity is a Tennessee native. She resides in Leiper’s Fork, a small town in Williamson County, Tennessee with husband, Brent, and Golden Retriever, Duke.

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