The Industrial Revolution brought terrific advances in productivity as well as smokestacks that belched black clouds of pollution into the sky. As people came to understand the environmental and health impacts of new industrial processes, their demands for government regulation conflicted with business’s desire to maximize profits. Thanks to the Information Revolution, increased productivity now extends beyond the factory to the office—and smart business people recognize that saving money and protecting the environment can be complementary rather than opposing aims.
To see how, let’s consider the document workflow of a typical office workplace. Close your eyes and take a walk around the copy room with me: you can see several printers, a copying machine, spare cartridges filled with toner and/or ink, reams of paper, a waste basket, a blue paper-recycling bin, and a locked cabinet for sensitive documents that must be shredded. These items are all part of a document workflow necessary to support the 95% of business information which, according to Wikipedia, is still stored on paper.
Each of these items imposes direct costs on a business, in addition to the purchase price and replacement cost. For example, printers, shredders, and copying machines are generally always left on, pushing up the electric bill. There is also a cost to properly disposing of shredded documents, recycled paper, and waste paper.
The indirect costs of a paper workflow include the environmental harm caused during the manufacture of printers, cartridges, ink, toner, paper, as well as recycling operations. Production of these business tools invariably results in deforestation, water and air pollution, and solid waste accumulation in landfills.
Eliminating or reducing the use of paper in your document workflow makes perfect sense, because it makes your bottom line black and the world green. So how do you do it? Review documents on your computer screen, not paper. Print only if you must. Use a virtual printer to print business files to electronic form (such as PDF) rather than paper. Use both sides of the paper. Recycle internally by taking notes on old printouts. Archive business information on hard drives rather than filing cabinets.
Speaking of filing cabinets, securing files on a password-protected computer is safer than putting them in a locked filing cabinet. Thus, another benefit of eliminating paper printouts of sensitive business information is increased protection for your business’s intellectual property.
Take a look at your document workflow today. Are there any “smokestacks” you could cut out of the process? Make a plan to make your office greener and then do something today to save yourself some money!