Printers gets a rough ridewhen it
comes tomaking business processes more environmentally
friendly. It is not the most wasteful area,
but it is the most conspicuous. IDC estimates that 60 trillion
pages a year are printed worldwide and that the average business
wastes 88 million sheets - the overflowing output trays of
uncollected printouts are a graphic indication of the
waste.
Kyocera Mita conducted research in 2008 into employees'
engagement with environmental issues. The study investigated how
much workplace printing was unnecessary.
Tracey Rawling Church, marketing director for Kyocera Mita, says
some measures taken to cut waste can actually be the cause of it.
"A lot of things are done that result in paper being wasted. For
example, printing off an e-mail just to read it. People think that
by putting the paper in the recycling tray afterwards completely
mitigates this, but it does not," she says.
Her observations are shared by Alan McLeish, senior product
marketing manager for Oki Printing Solutions. He says: "If you make
it a policy not to print e-mails unless there are exceptional
circumstances, it will save a huge amount of paper. When it is
necessary to print e-mails, we encourage people to print in mono so
that they use less consumables, and to think before they print.
With e-mails there is often one page of information and sometimes
four or five pages of extraneous information attached. So select
the pages you actually want to print by previewing and choosing
exactly what you need."
Duplex
printing
Whether printing e-mails or other documents, using both sides of
the page can almost halve the number of pages used. The current
trend away from personal printers
in favour of departmental multifunction printers (MFPs) means
most employees have access to a duplex printer and
this should be set as the default mode. The greater number of
pages printed are often draft copies or for personal use and it is
rare that duplex is unsuitable or unacceptable.
The use of MFPs may seem to be a good way to save on paper
because people will think twice before printing anything that they
have to leave their seat to collect. In practice, this is not
always the case and documents lie uncollected in the tray.
One way to avoid this is to delay printing until the person is
actually at the printer. Lexmark has a system that requires
personal ID input before a print is made. The ID format can be just
about anything that suits the users: a PIN number, various ID cards
or even proximity badges. If a document is not collected, it is not
physically printed and a time limit ensures the encrypted file is
wiped from the printer's memory if it is not accessed. This not
only saves paper, but also means users have a second chance to
decide if the printout is necessary.
Built-in
greenness
It is not effective to just ask people to save paper and
resources business is foremost in their mind - not greenness. That
is why Lexmark and others are trying to build green approaches into
the technology. Raj Meghani, head of marketing at Lexmark, says,
"Green is not necessarily on the individual user's mind. It may be
from a corporate perspective where they have metrics to meet and
want to understand how they can drive down cost and improve the
efficiencies along the business processes in the supply chain. The
individual sitting in the office is only concerned that they can
print when they need to and that the print they get is of use to
them. It is not a Big Brother approach that is needed, but more of
an educational/influencing one - ways of helping them to raise that
level of awareness."
It is also a case of making the company aware of what they are
spending. Printing costs account for between 5% and 15% of a
business's expenditure and a lot of this is hidden. "We look at how
we can help our customers understand the cost of printing when they
do not know themselves. IDC says 67% of businesses do not know how
much they spend on printing," Meghani adds.
The printer manufacturers are battling to get the message
through that a little education can bring big savings. VJ Joshi,
executive vice-president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group, claims
customers which take control of their imaging and printing
environment boost productivity and can
reduce costs by up to 30%.
At a time when belt-tightening is in the air, his message is
beginning to attract more attention.
Read more about green
business processes:
There's more to green IT than energy efficiency
Green IT strategies will lay dormant during economic turmoil, but
will not go away
Green policies would keep UK business busy for up to a year, says
research
Suppliers talk green at CeBIT but they still have long way to go,
says Greenpeace
Three out of five UK firms have no green IT procurement
strategy
Multifunction printers cheesed off with staff
Useful
links:
Kyocera Mita
Lexmark
Oki Printing Solutions