Paperless and Office Automation: Economical, Environmental, Efficient

Is your business paper-intensive?

• The average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year.
  

• The United States alone, which has less than 5% of the world’s population, consumes 30% of the world’s paper.

• The costs of using paper in the office can run 13 to 31 times the cost of purchasing the paper in the first place!
  

Economical: Saving Paper Saves Money.

You’re probably thinking, “What’s the big deal? My office doesn’t spend much on paper.” But what most people don’t realize is that the cost of buying paper is just the tip of the paper iceberg. For each sheet of paper used, a company incurs not only purchasing costs, but also storage, copying, printing, postage, disposal, and recycling—and it adds up. A recent study estimates that associated paper costs could be as much as 31 times the purchasing costs (not including labor). So, that ream of paper that you paid $5 for really could cost up to $155!

• A large financial services company determined that if each employee used double-sided copying to conserve just one sheet of paper each week, the firm would save $700,000 each year.
• Another bank cut its paper consumption by 25% in two years by increasing the use of on-line forms and reports, e-mail, double-sided copying, and lighter-weight paper.
  

Environmental: Saving Paper Reduces Our Impact

Paper is an office necessity for some essential tasks, but it has an environmental cost. Creating paper from trees requires a lot of natural resources: trees, water, and energy.

• It takes more than 1½ cups of water to make one sheet of paper.
• Reducing paper use reduces greenhouse gases: 40 reams of paper is like 1.5 acres of pine forest absorbing carbon for a year.
  

Efficient: Saving Paper Increases Efficiency

Paperwork! It brings to mind filling out unnecessarily complicated forms. Electronic forms can now make that job easier and more efficient. Businesses that have converted to electronic forms and filing systems have found that it takes less time to both find and process information. This doesn’t mean that electronic forms should replace all paper. Most businesses find that reducing their paper use increases their efficiency.