Environmentalists and finance chiefs alike are disgusted by the amount of paper that’s wasted in the average office — albeit sometimes for very different reasons.
However, there are simple, painless ways to reduce the office excess.
What to do: Enlist the help of IT — or an admin — to tweak the printer settings in your office.
Here are three simple ways you can save on ink and paper costs:
- Print on both sides. It’s as easy as changing the settings on printers to automatically print on both sides of the page, but the savings will add up fast as the amount of paper is reduced by half.
- Cut out the color. Sure, it may look nice to print out memos or reports in glossy color. But, in most cases, black and white will do just fine — especially after you see how much cheaper it is.
- Prohibit printing e-mails. It’s not something employees are likely to quit cold turkey, but even if a quarter of your workforce stops printing out every two-sentence e-mail, your firm can really rein in printing costs.
Also, adding a message like, Please consider the environment before printing unnecessarily; and please recycle, may be all it takes to keep environmentally conscious staffers from hitting the print button on frivolous e-mails.
