| CUTTING PAPER - ACTIONS - Methods |
One of the most effective ways to reduce paper use is using both sides of a piece of paper rather than just one. The technical term for this is ‘duplexing’. While most of us duplex a lot already, we could be doing it much more. With duplexing, you save money on buying paper and on storage and mailing. It is also easier to fold and staple, and to carry around. Some prints and copies do need to be single-sided, but most do not.
Duplexing can be done on copiers, printers, and multi-function devices (MFDs). The primary duplexing issues to consider are 'default duplex', the speed at which your copier (or printer) duplexes, and assuring the reliability of duplexing.
By 'image avoidance' we mean that the content of a page doesn't get printed at all. Simple examples of this are fax cover sheets, confirmation sheets, and printer cover pages. Usually, either the information on these is unnecessary, or can be incorporated into the actual document. For copying, more copying 'on demand' can avoid a wasted inventory of copied documents that become obsolete. Because the costs of both the paper and the imaging are avoided, image avoidance has the largest savings.
Another way to avoid images is to change way information is managed. When an electronic database or document is more "accessible" to someone than a paper version, people may choose to print less. Accessibility includes finding the information, managing it, and reading it. While these are quite effective, both the costs and other savings of electronic data management are usually well beyond the paper-related costs, but it can only help to highlight the paper costs to help motivate such changes and insure that they are implemented well regarding paper use.
Image reduction reduces the area of an image so that more images can be put on the same area of paper. While some reduction can be done to reduce large images to regular size sheets of paper, a larger impact can be made by putting more than one 'page' of content on a side of a sheet of paper. This is called 'image combination' on copiers and 'n-up printing' on printers. Reducing font sizes, margins, and the use of 'white space' can also reduce the number of 'pages' a document uses.
Some strategies don't save paper at all, but are still worthwhile. Many inkjet and laser printers have 'economy', 'draft', or "toner reduction" modes that use less toner than is standard. This can save on ink and toner costs, which can be larger than paper costs. In addition, some printers operate faster in draft modes.
"Half-used" paper has an image on one side (from a printer, a copier, or outdated letterhead), but has a clean second side. Half-used paper is ready for a second life through "reuse". Reusing paper is not recycling, as you are using the paper directly, not just recovering the value in the fibers.
When a change is made to "thinner" paper, less paper fiber is needed to make the same number of sheets. We really mean 'lighter' paper, but it is easier to visualize the change in terms of thickness.
One approach is to change standard copy paper to a lighter "basis weight"
than the typical 20 lb. (75 g/m2 used in the U.S, perhaps
18 lb.
This is not currently available, but could be in the future.
Another approach is to reduce the paper weight used if it is more
than 20 lb.
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Image Avoidance
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