Green printing: save money and the environment
The Bottom line
Reducing overall use of paper, toner, equipment and energy is the most powerful environmental and financial strategy you can choose; far more effective than recycling. Surprisingly, it’s actually the easiest as well.
Through device rationalisation, intelligent document management solutions, in-built output options available in today’s modern devices and a range of other approaches, it’s not difficult to reduce the volume of paper and associated resources by 50 percent or more.
CASE STUDY
Repco solution
With sales in excess of $900 million, over 4,000 staff and more than 400 stores, the Repco Corporation is one of the largest reseller and supplier in the automotive after market parts and accessories across Australia and New Zealand. Repco was finding management of hundreds of ageing printers across 350 sites burdensome. The help desk received up to five calls a day from across Australia and New Zealand about problems with printers, toner and the time involved in getting machines serviced. Turnaround for replacement toner and parts was slow; up to three days from the time a call was made to the help desk.
Rob Watts, Repco’s information services manager, had no real visibility into the status of the fleet, volume of printing, or even the total cost of service and support. “We had six different vendors and it was difficult to track costs of printing or servicing the machines,” he said. “As the company grew, I realised we needed a better solution.”
Repco investigated the option of taking all printing needs in-house. The move required an upgrade of the entire fleet and employment of a support person to manage maintenance. As an alternative, Repco looked at the option of outsourcing and decided to engage Upstream. They provided Repco with a managed print solution that included the roll-out of more than 400 printers, fleet management, service and support. For the first time, Repco had a common supplier for all its printers, services and consumables. Upstream tailored a service model that would ensure all Repco’s branches had fast access to service and support. The model included storing back up printers and parts at Repco’s six distribution centres. This strategy enabled Upstream to deliver printers, parts and consumables within two to three hours to 85 percent of the stores across Australia and New Zealand.
Upstream managed Repco’s entire fleet from a central location. This helped ensure smooth running of devices, timely delivery of consumables and insight into printing costs and efficiency. “The benefit of central management is that now our users don’t need to get involved in troubleshooting printer outages; most problems are resolved remotely,” said Watts. “Also, with one supplier providing solutions to our needs, we have a better insight to what we spend each month and can identify problem areas and opportunities to save.”
The results
Repco spends in excess of $1 million a year on its print services. Upstream’s managed print solution has delivered a 27 percent cost saving, or more than $270,000 per annum. The service model has relieved Repco’s help desk of complaints, and helped improve responsiveness to the stores. Printers, parts and consumables are delivered within two to three hours to most stores where it previously took up to three days. Repco’s consumption of paper has dramatically reduced, moving from a system where three copies of invoices were printed to an electronic system where they are scanned and emailed instead.
Breakout box:
The Facts about Paper
1. 17 reams of copy paper uses one tree
2. More than 90 percent of paper in Australia is not from recycled stock
3. Total paper consumption in Australia last year was 3,912 tonnes
4. To make good paper, you have to use hard wood from trees
5. Paper doesn’t just cost us trees, it costs water to make and is expensive to transport
—Neil Tilley and he is CEO at Upstream Print Solutions (www.upstream.com.au).
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Great article. It is so important for all businesses to think about the environment. Your article touches on some really important ways in which costs and the environment can be saved.
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Don’t forget double-sided printing!
So many businesses use twice the amount of paper than they really need due to single-sided printing. Unfortunately most printers are not equipped for easy double-sided printing but the savings in paper expenses alone should be encouragement enough to find one that does.
I am happy to find this post very useful for me, as it contains lot of information. I always prefer to read the quality content and this thing I found in you post. Thanks for sharing
Sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture. Go green even if it costs a tad more…
Oh we have been talking about cutting back on printing for what 25 years and I can finally claim to be very very very green. The way I improved our behavior was not to connect the printer as when it is connected we tend to print out anything of remote interest, now we think about it before going to the trouble of connecting the printer to the network and using that precious art paper.
Thanks for the advice. My small company is very keen on trying to cut expenses and remain green. We have tried a variety of things and its been great. I will have to suggest some of these ideas to help save money. Thanks.
Thats so true. So much paper is wasted in smaller and bigger companies. And there still is the idea of having a hard copy of something feels safer to store. However making several frequent (external & internal) backups could do the job. Besides that, there are many Government organisations that have their protocols to stick to that require them to keep a hard copy on file. It would deffinately make a difference if you reduce your printing.
Great information on how to save some money on printing. But also I would recommend get continues ink system feed if you using inkjet prints but I would be careful on which ink they use.
MT
Slightly off topic I was watching a documentary about waste food last night and how we should reduce waste and make sure it is used more efficiently. For example, in Hong Kong over 30 tons of food per day that is wasted from restaurants is taken to the landfill and the local christian charity does not have enough man power to pick up all the food from the restaurants to feed the poor and this is not the left overs from customers either this is food that is prepared but cannot be used the next day. Although recycling paper is really important and it does recieve lots of press the waste coming from restaurants and hotels which can help the needy does not get nearly as much attention in my opinion.
Document scanners in my experience, are a great way to free mountains of paper for recycling. Digital copies make searching for the right page a breeze, with the modern scanners OCR capabilities. With the fall in price of desktop scanners that are capable of scanning hundreds of page per minute, there really is no excuse for companies not investing.
Another great tip when it comes to saving money and the environment is to see if the there are re-filled versions of the ink or toner cartridges your printer uses. As long as you check reviews from the sites you are purchasing refilled ink cartridges from, you can get the same quality prints for alot cheaper.