Stinky Ink News

Guide to Green printing

Back in the ’70’s Xerox coined the phrase ‘The Paperless office’. Oh how times have changed!. The modern office is a paper-greedy environment. In the UK we get through 4.8 million tonnes of printing paper every year and hardly any of it is recycled - 86 percent is sent to landfills or incinerated. In theory and in Xerox’s opinion our newfangled systems and advanced technologies should reduce the amount of paper that we use, but, unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be happening. Worldwide, consumption of paper is predicted to double by 2020, which will put even more pressure on local and international forests and contribute to climate change. Fortunately, reducing paper-use requires only a few simple measures and a green, paper friendly office is easy to achieve.

The Issues:

First of all the good news.
In the UK most of the paper purchased is sourced from Sustainable forests. In 2001 Friends of the Earth did, however, find that some of the biggest paper mills in the country were still importing paper pulp from timber derived from ancient forests in Indonesia. This exploitation they claim, will increase as demand increases. Furthermore, the wood pulp that does come from the UK, while from sustainable sources, often results in the loss of habitats and biodiversity as older woodlands are replaced with managed plantations of fast growing conifers. Saving biodiversity, rather than trees is becoming the main concern – just when you thought you were starting to make a difference!.

Now the downside.
When paper is sent to landfill, the waste will rot and release methane into the atmosphere as it decomposes; if incinerated, the paper will release potentially toxic chemicals (which are used in the production process) as it is burnt. In addition to this, bleaching paper with chlorine adds dioxins to the environment. Recycled paper is not normally re-bleached and, if it is, oxygen rather than chlorine is usually used. Another bonus of recycled paper is that it uses between 28 -70 per cent less energy than producing virgin paper, as well as using less water. Be aware however, when we have used cheap copier paper we get problems with our laser printers jamming. To get round this we use a slightly higher quality paper which is designed for colour laser printers and this is used throughout our own office.

Reduce:

Reduce must always be the first step in any environmental program, so look at your own set up and ask if any of these steps are possible:

• a. Duplex printing – set your printer to use both sides. If you don’t have duplex available on your present printer, bear the issue in mind the next time you upgrade or change your printer and make sure that the duplex option is available.
• b. Adjust the margins to fit more text in – which is really obvious
• c. Include a space for publications on your website so reports and documents can be downloaded and viewed on screen.
• d. Scan your letterhead into the computer, or even better get hold of the original artwork and produce an electronic template copy. This can also save a fortune on printing, we only print out letterheads/compliment slips as they are needed.
• e. Use email rather than memos. This is not the no-brainer it appears as email has actually increased printing by 40%. This can be resolved by training employees NOT to print out emails.

Reuse:

This becomes a bit more difficult, but by looking at what we actually use office paper for in house, it quickly became apparent that we could re-use nearly 60% of the printing that we were doing, just by turning it over and using the unused side (doesn’t work if you are using the Duplex option!). Think about re-using envelopes especially if you have an internal mail system.

Recycle:

Office paper is the highest quality paper available. It can be recycled up to five or six times, starting its life as top-grade paper and eventually ending up at the bottom of the paper chain as kitchen or toilet paper. If you managed to recycle a tonne of paper, you would save at least 30,000 litres of water, and enough electricity (3,000 – 4,000 KWh) for an average three-bedroom house for one year.