Unfortunately, the dream of the paperless office has not become a reality. With advances in printing and email technology, more documents rather than less are being printed, but we can still do something to reduce our paper consumption.

Paper can be recycled in the large 240 litre blue bins. Please do not put any materials in in these bins (NO plastics, rubbish, wrappers, food etc.)

The best we can do is to minimize usage in the first place. This not only reduces the amount of materials used but the energy in printing them. Paper consumption has a significant environmental impact - in the pollutants emitted, the natural resources as raw materials and the energy used during manufacture. So be discriminating in what you print!

Reduce your paper use

• Use electronic versions for policies, technical manuals, employee directories, job postings and any other documents that are suitable for this format.
• Make use of reading computer-generated reports and on-line documents without printing
• Condense documents so they use less space on a page (use smaller fonts and margins for large documents).
• Collect paper that has been used one side only and reuse it as draft or scrap paper.
• Reuse outdated letterhead as in-house memo paper.
• Reuse draft paper in fax machines.

Distribution and forms

• Distributing documents to fewer people.
• Regular clean-up audit of mailing lists - Request address confirmation on correspondence.
• Eliminate unnecessary forms.
• Redesign paper forms to use half a sheet of paper and/or create double-sided forms.
• Make use of word template forms to avoid the cost of pre-printed forms that may go out of date.

Systems and settings

• Make duplex (double-sided) printing a default for all printers.
• Introduce charging for both photocopiers and printing. This can be done by installing a recording device and assigning copy charges by employee, department, or project.
• Subscribe to online versions of newsletter and other publications when available.
• Make use of letterhead on demand – eliminate obsolete letterhead by making software that can be changed at anytime to incorporate new logo, title and address changes.
• Use other media such as microfiche, CD ROMs, DVD ROMs to archive documents instead of printing them.
• Configure fax machines to print a confirmation page for failed transmissions only.