Although the term “paperless office” has been around for a few years, most offices are still in the process of simply reducing paper waste. Paper use is one of the easiest ways a business can tackle its overall carbon footprint. There may still be a need to use paper in the first place, but being able to reduce paper waste will help your business finances as well as the planet.

Most businesses have a printer and/or photocopier. These modern machines are very simple to use, often with just one click of a mouse or one touch on a screen. However, many people are unaware that printers can do a range of things to save on paper use, and therefore paper waste. The default settings on your printer are usually portrait and single-sided. Changing to duplex printing (where the paper is printed on both sides) immediately halves your paper use.

Installing a password-print rule in your office can also save on unnecessary printing and reduce paper waste. This stops the printer from automatically printing as soon as the command has been received from the individual computer. The employee must physically be at the printer, and punch in their password for the printer to work. This is commonly used in large offices where confidential papers should not be left unattended at a printer. However, it can also reduce the paper used, by preventing the production of printed material that is never collected from the printer.

One of the most common items to be printed in an office are emails. Printing an email onto paper immediately increases the threat to your business information technology security policy. Printed emails are often left out on desks, and could be seen by cleaners, visitors or other sensitive groups. Discouraging the practice of printing out emails should be a priority for all businesses. If your employees say that emails are easier for them to read on paper, investigate ways of helping them to increase the text size on their computer screens.

Internal office meetings can generate a lot of paper. Printed agendas and handouts can run into hundreds of pages each day for a large company. To reduce paper waste, businesses can encourage more use of projector or large-screen computer presentations so that everyone can see the information without the need to print it. If you use PowerPoint, these can be emailed to individuals afterwards instead of printing hand-outs.

A radical idea to reduce paper waste in the office is to remove the individual waste paper baskets. This not only helps to reduce paper waste, but also all other kinds of office waste such as plastic, compost-able materials and drinks cans. Placing larger bins at strategic points around the office discourages employees from creating waste simply because they have to get up from their desk to dispose of it.

Encourage your staff to re-use paper, by writing on the back of printed sheets. Any paper that contains sensitive information should be shredded and not re-used, but much of the paper waste generated in an office can be reused as note paper.

When purchasing paper for your office, choose recycled wherever possible. The quality of recycled paper has vastly improved in recent years and now does not usually have that handmade look and feel. Remember that envelopes can also be recycled if they do not have a plastic window, and recycled paper envelopes are also available.

By following these steps, you can reduce the amount of paper waste in your office in a very short space of time. The savings you make financially should be a further incentive to try.

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