- You think empty toner cartridges are an opportunity to work on your jump shot.
- You think the thud your 200-page report makes when you drop it on your boss’ desk shows you worked twice as hard than if you delivered a 100-page report printed on both sides of the page.
- You think ENERGY STAR is something you get for drinking an extra pot of coffee in the morning.
- You print all your e-mails just so you have something to put in your little blue recycling bin at the end of the day.
While much progress has been made to green offices, there is still a lot that can be done by companies and employees to conserve energy and reduce waste.
Here’s what you can do in your office to improve the health of the environment one step at a time:
- Shop Smart: Before making your next printer or MFP purchase, be sure to arm yourself with a list of products that are ENERGY STAR qualified and investigate technologies like Xerox solid ink that lowers your impact on the environment through less consumable waste and a smaller lifecycle carbon footprint. In fact, solid ink printers have lower lifecycle energy demand and global warming impact than comparable laser printers with a 12 percent lower carbon footprint. It''s important to take a look at individual manufacturers and their particular environmental practices, especially involving manufacturing, transportation and equipment recycling at end-of-life.
- Eliminate Unnecessary Waste: When a laser printer runs out of toner, you are left with big, bulky print cartridges, not to mention other replaceable components such as fusers and imaging units. Solid ink printers use compact, cartridge-free solid ink sticks, so when you run out of ink there’s nothing left to throw away. And there’s also less packaging to recycle. The only other replaceable unit is a maintenance kit. Compared to laser printers, Xerox''s solid ink printers also create 90 percent less consumables waste. Besides drastically reduced landfill waste, solid ink is small enough to fit in your desk drawer, saving your work environment from wasted space.
- Consolidate Equipment: Take a hard look at your current peripheral network. Many offices have a variety of individual machines to print, copy, scan and fax, and each one uses electricity. By consolidating these products, you''re not only saving energy, you''re opening up valuable floor space and most likely saving money on lease and service agreements. Energy savings can double if the multifunction system replaces products that are not ENERGY STAR qualified.
- Reduce Paper Consumption: By simply selecting to print on both sides of a sheet of paper, businesses will eliminate up to 50 percent of their paper waste. Less paper also means reduced handling costs.Free software is available that will eliminate those annoying extra pages that print unnecessarily. Document management technologies offer another way to cut down on paper usage. While capabilities vary by manufacturer, many multifunction products come with capabilities such as scan-to-network or scan-to-e-mail. These cut paper usage and energy consumption.
Sources
1. Staples, “Staples Expands Ink Cartridge Recycling Program to Offer Staples Rewards for All Brands of Ink and Toner.” Feb. 1, 2009.
2. Craig Le Clair. “Green IT, ECM, and Natural Capitalism.” Forrester Research, March 20, 2009.
3. Jackie Cefola, et al. Lisa Belkin. “Clicking, at Last, on ‘Don’t Print’.” New York Times, March 20, 2008.
4. Susan Kinsella, Gerard Gleason, Victoria Mills, Nicole Rycroft, Jim Ford, Kelly Sheehan and Joshua Martin. “The State of the Paper Industry.” The Green Press Initiative, 2007.