I work in an office with a lot of people who are over 50-60 years old and they seem to think that you have to print something for it to become real. We recently found out that we use WAY too much paper, and I want to come up with ideas to reduce paper useage. We do need to keep official paper records of some things, but 95% of the paper is eventually discarded. I thought this would be a good place to discuss ideas on how to reduce paper in the office as much as possible, either from people's experiences or just brainstorming. Things that worked, things that didn't work, etc.. We have recycling bins already, but people are not using them as much as they should. A lot of paper still goes in the trash. One thing that I'm going to be looking into is how to sign things in a super-secure, easy, electronic way. Any ideas?
You should really research this a bit more, maybe then you'll find out that NOT recycling paper is a lot more "green" than recycling it. Did you know that paper companies plant gigantic lands only to use as the source of making the paper, which incidentally happens to be great for the environment? And did you know that paper decomposes in 2-3 weeks max in a landfill? and did you know that the process of recycling paper releases a $h!t ton of greenhouse gasses, more so than manufacturing it from scratch (counting the positive effect of the EXTRA plants paper companies invest in)? Come on bro, don't make the mistake of thinking those hippies know what they're talking about. They're stoned out of there mind half of the time, and the other half they spend getting hypnotized by Floyd and pulling science out of their collective a$$es.
Really good post. I don't understand the fascination with recycling. If you do the research, the only kind of recycling that nets an environmental gain is aluminum recycling, only because it's so easy to melt down aluminum and repurpose it. As for the OP, I think it's a cultural thing that's hard to reshape. I work in a paper-heavy office. There's a woman in my department that prints out every email that hits her inbox... yes she's in her 50's and she doesn't like reading things off of a screen. If the HR department sends an email about Domino's selling pizza in the lobby, she prints it out. It's insane...
Use every inch of the paper. So much is wasted just because it has a small amount on it when you could use it for scrap or other projects and use it instead of using post it notes
I agree with the recycling paper being bad for the environment. Paper decomposes quickly, it's made from a completely renewable resource, and it's very energy-intensive to recycle. But reusing paper is a great idea. If you get a lot of single-sided stuff printed, put in a new printer for "non-essential" printing, and print on the backs of all the paper that's left printed on a single-side.
That's interesting. Some questions: 1) How many paper companies actually do this? 2) If every paper company used a piece of land where trees grow easily, wouldn't this require a lot of companies to go out and do this to areas where trees would grow naturally? 3) Have you considered other things like: the storage facilities for archived documents, the trucks/ships which carry them, etc? My goal is to eliminate the paper. Recycling is something that's being done, but given what you've said, getting rid of paper is a bigger priority now!!
Easiest way is to give everyone a second monitor. I can't imagine going back to a single monitor setup ever again at work.
Show those who control the purse strings the costs associated with using so much paper. If you can show them hard evidence that they could save a significant amount of money by reducing paper usage, then they can set policy within the company and the older set will have to tow the line. Identify those types of documents being printed and discard shortly after. Use overhead projectors for meetings, rather than making copies and handing them out. For things that must be printed, use double-sided when possible. etc. Good luck.
I print out EVERYTHING because I hate reading stuff on my computer, it hurts my eyes. I can't stand reading 40 page articles for class online. And I am in my 20s. Thats not an old people thing, a lot of people just don't like having to read or do certain things on the computer. I do print my stuff double sided, but that has more to do with me not wanting to carry a ton of paper around and less to do with
When it's printed, it's no longer an "email." Also, don't print the meeting's agenda and give one to each participant. Put it up on the projector, or print only ONE. Make notes on your laptops or handheld devices. There's this dude who has one of those smart "recording" pens here in the office... we joke around about it, but it comes in handy when we want to "remember" what someone said... instead of going through paper...
going green for the sake of going green is stupid. "Is itcost effective?" should be the question asked.
Going green is almost never cost effective. That's why we are in the situation we are in. If the government\people were serious about going green, they should give lucrative tax breaks for businesses that allow a percentage of their employees to work remotely from home. You'd save on gas, traffic, real estate, utilities, etc. So much can be done from home. I almost NEVER need to go in to an office and I know many, many, many more people are exactly the same.
I don't know about all that green stuff, but you can use Adobe Acrobat for things that need to be signed digitally in a secure fashion.
