Environmentalism Works

It must be nearly 30 years ago that I heard the expression, the paperless office.  I’m sure many readers will have come across it too, but if you’ve worked in any sort of office based environment I’m willing to bet that it’s still no where near becoming reality yet.   In fact I personally have not really envisaged any real drop in paper usage at least just in the places I’ve worked from.  There are lots of good intentions, like those signatures in every email that nobody ever reads asking ‘do you really need to print this email’.  Does anyone really take any notice of them, good intentions sure but less paper – I don’t think so.

Of course we do use recycled paper more and most paper in the majority of environments I use is reused as far as I can tell.  So that’s got to be good news for the world’s forests, there are lots of other phrases like sustainable forestry which suggest things are moving in the right direction.  People want to help, we genuinely want to change but it’s not easy to fit these changes to busy word schedules and office environments.

I’m hoping the new wave of tablets and notebooks will make a difference eventually.  One of the most difficult things about not printing stuff out was it was so much easier to read text on a page than a shiny screen.  The Kindle has smashed this myth – it is genuinely as easy to read as a book.  If  you’ve never seen one, I urge you to check them out they really are as good as they say.  The technology that makes the electronic display as easy to read as the printed word will hopefully help to push towards the paperless office.  The advantage again is the sheer cost – the Kindle is very inexpensive and I suspect will plummet over the years to come.  More and more reason why they could come to replace the reams of paper we produce.

If you are keen on reducing the amount of resources related to printing then you should also consider the toner cartridges.  The amount of oil required to manufacture a new toner cartridge is about 3-4 liters yet they are manufactured to be one use only.  The reason is simply to maximize profits for the printer manufacturers, there is not other reason they could be easily reused.   In fact there are lots of companies that will supply kits to refill toner cartridges, you just have to look around.  The payoff is great – both to the environment and to your printing costs – approximately 80% – of course this could be even greater if you really do try and print out much less.