Be Good to the Environment: 8 Ways Businesses Can Reduce Paper Waste
Are you a business owner? If so, then you understand the challenges of managing people and resources.
After all, it’s important to maximize profits while reducing unnecessary waste as much as possible. This includes paper waste.
When it comes to protecting the environment, every step a business takes toward implementing a green philosophy can help make an enormous difference. The key is to understand where to start.
This article takes a look at great tips for reducing the amount of paper that your company wastes each year. Keep reading to discover insight into how to do your part in making the world a better place.
1. Eliminate Snail Mail
When it comes to reducing wasted paper in the modern workplace, one of the smartest choices you can make is to eliminate the use of snail mail as much as possible.
It’s no secret that traditional mail is a monumental waste of paper products. This includes everything from paper envelopes, letters printed on common copy paper, to every type of junk mail you can imagine.
The decision to switch to email will impact your office in a number of ways. First, it will reduce the expense of purchase paper, as well as the cost of disposing of paper, while also reducing the amount of money dedicated to printer toner and printer upkeep.
Plus you’ll have far fewer physical documents to keep track of or store onsite.
Click for more information about the benefits of automated letter generation.
2. Convert to Digital Files
Over the past decade, more and more companies have begun converting their documents to digital files. This enables them to store documents in the cloud or on hard drives capable of holding millions of files in a very small space.
Converting paper documents to digital files offers your company a number of positive benefits. For starters, you’ll open up a lot of office space formerly used to house file cabinets and other forms of file storage, you won’t have to waste time searching through boxes in search of a specific document, and you won’t have to worry about keeping track of outdated information.
Digital files are literally tiny bits of information stored on a hard drive, an onsite server, or an offsite server. This means you can store millions of times as many documents while requiring far less storage space and at a lower cost.
Digital files are easy to search for and can be recalled with the click of a button on your computer keyboard. They can also be organized by a variety of criteria, including the creation date. This makes them incredibly easy to locate and delete when the information becomes outdated.
3. Purchase Recycled Paper
Another strategy for reducing the amount of paper wasted in the world is to only purchase recycled paper.
Waste paper recycling is an easy way that you can help reduce water waste, save trees, and save energy. After all, once the trees have been harvested and turned into paper products such as zero waste paper towels, there’s no reason not to recycle and reuse it over and over again.
It’s important to remember that most paper can be recycled up to 5 or 10 times, so that’s a lot of trees that can be saved just by making a smart and environmentally-friendly choice every time you order office supplies.
There are plenty of recycled paper brands to choose from, and the quality of the product is equally as good as the unrecycled version. So do the planet a favor and save trees whenever possible.
4. Reduce Font Size and Margins
Believe it or not, you can actually reduce the amount of paper wasted in your office by simply selecting a small font size and changing the margins on all documents.
Keep in mind that even the smallest changes can make a big difference in the long run.
Reduce font size and margins means more information can be contained on fewer pages, thus you’ll end up using less paper. This reduction of paper consumption can really add up over the course of a year. Thus helping save both money and the environment.
5. Print on Both Side of Paper
A lot of paper is wasted when businesses print on only one side. When you stop to think about it, this essentially results in using twice as much paper than is necessary.
Most office printers allow you to print both sides, so it’s really just a matter of teaching your employees to take advantage of this feature. You end up saving paper and reducing the amount of space needed to store printed documents.
When you combine printing on both sides of the page with reduced font and margin sizes, you should really start noticing a significant reduction in paper consumption.
6. Use Dual Computer Monitors
Have you ever considered providing your employees with dual computer monitors at their desks? This is actually a great way to reduce paper consumption while enabling them to view multiple documents at the same time.
Many people will work from a printed document on their desk. But this isn’t really necessary when you have 2 screens side by side.
Plus, making corrections and transferring data is much simpler and faster than sending a printed copy.
7. Make the Most of Mobile Devices
The speed of business continues to move faster and faster, and the amount of information you have to process is increasing at an incredible rate. That’s why many companies are taking advantage of the benefits of mobile devices for communication and sending digital documents.
8. Use a Digital Invoicing System
You can also submit digital invoices to customers. This offers multiple benefits, including saving money on wasted paper and the speed of delivery. Because keep in mind that the quicker a customer is invoiced, the quicker they can submit payment.
A Helpful Guide for How to Reduce Paper Waste at Your Company
Saving money while taking care of the environment should be the goal of every company. Fortunately, these tips for reducing paper waste will help you get started.
Keep scrolling to discover more small business advice on our blog.
Trevor Anderson wrote this article on behalf of FreeUp. FreeUp is the fastest-growing freelance marketplace in the US. FreeUp only accepts the top 1% of freelance applicants. Click here to get access to the top freelancers in the world.
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