8 simple tips to reduce your printing environmental impact
Did you know that you have the power at-hand right now to lower your printing impact on the environment? According to the European Union ENERGY STAR website, the amount of energy to create one sheet of paper is 50 times the amount of energy it takes for a typical 50 page per minute office copier to print it. 50 times!
Obviously, paper is necessary for printing and a printed page offers many benefits. But there are numerous ways to use less paper without sacrificing those benefits.
- Cut paper use up to half through two-sided printing and copying.
- Pack more on the page: Changing the default margins from 1.25 inches to 1 inch can reduce the amount of paper you use by up to eight percent!
- Eliminate unwanted pages (i.e. with minimal or no content), with software such as GreenPrint, which is available for free to those of you connected to a solid ink printer or MFP.
- Use N-up printing, which fits up to 8 originals on one or both sides of a page (a presentation can fit on 1/16 the number of pages!).
- For those with Xerox products, click on the Earth Smart Settings button in your Xerox driver and watch the “green printing gas gauge” grow as you set your default printing to two-sided, 2-up, turn off banner pages, etc.
- Hold/release print jobs using PIN codes. You just punch in a code to get your printer or MFP to print, a process that confirms whether you really wanted that document.
- Use the scan to e-mail capabilities of your multifunction printer to reduce the need to print and mail hardcopy documents.
- Use recycled paper, which requires approximately 70 percent the energy to produce as compared to virgin paper. Solid ink printers and MFPs produce the same vibrant print quality on recycled paper as they do on high quality papers!
Hopefully you’re now convinced that reducing paper waste is beneficial to the environment, and it’s really quite easy to print smarter with the tips above. But if you’re still not convinced…then consider the cost savings!
Via Small Business Solutions, (2012)