Wasting Paper

IT GROWS ON TREES

Wasting paper in the office is not only bad for the environment, it can cost you money, too. —Lee Gimpel

With the technologies that have been introduced in the last decade, it’s easy to assume that it won’t be long before printing on paper will be a thing of the past—and offices would go paperless. Not only has a decrease in paper usage not taken place, the printer is being used as much as ever. And while buying a printer may seem cheap—it is common for them to be offered for free with the purchase of a new computer— printing costs can definitely add up. A Cartridge World cost comparison from 2006 found that printer ink costs about $60 per ounce, while the same quantity of Chanel No. 5 perfume ran only $44 and milk only three cents.

A big cost culprit is printing out pages from the web. Perhaps it’s a story about your favorite baseball team or an important news item about a competitor. Rather than make a hard copy that is sure to be thrown away, try printing “to a file” so you have a soft copy of the page. One way to do this is with ScanSoft’s PaperPort, which allows you to convert web pages to PDF documents by simply sending them to a virtual printer. Another option is to just save a web page as an HTML or text document. With the text saved on your hard drive, you have the advantage of being able to highlight, make notes and search for it quickly rather than digging through stacks of paper.

If you do need to print out pages, ask yourself whether you need it to be a top-quality job. Oftentimes selecting “print” involves little thought to whether the document is being printed in high quality or draft mode. Try dropping your default quality level to draft and enhancing it when you need to show something to the boss or a client. Lexmark recommends printing double-sided to save paper. For printouts like PowerPoint slides, where a full sheet is not required in order to read the text, print multiple pages or slides per page.

Finally, money can also be saved with special software. Patented software algorithms, such as InkSaver, claims to drastically reduce how much ink is used by optimizing printer data and improving print quality over a regular “draft ” setting. And GreenPrint helps to remove those annoying extra pages (like a printout with only a footnote or banner ad on it) and track how much you’re saving. (Th e company claims an average savings of $90 per year.)

With all of your savings, you can splurge on a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Considering how much cash you might otherwise have poured into printer ink, the high-end bubbly can seem downright affordable at only $5 per ounce.