Is your business making an effort to
minimise the waste of consumable
products? If not, you could be missing
large potential savings that could also
benefit the environment.
According
to figures from government funded
Envirowise; the average office worker
gets through almost 1600 sheets of A4
paper a month or 19,200 a year. While
many less efficient offices use around
40,000 sheets per employee per
year!
Wasting paper not only affects the
environment, but damages your
profitability. With a ‘ream’ of 500
economy sheets of paper costing
upwards of £2, and inkjet/laser paper
costing up to £10 you can see how
excessive use of paper can increase
costs; let alone accounting for the cost
of printer or photocopier cartridges.
An example from Envirowise shows an SME
with 40 employees saved £40,000 a year
simply by minimising paper use and
wastage.
In addition to the financial savings
that can be made through paper reduction
there are a number of other areas where
offices can benefit by reducing waste
and making more efficient use of
resources. To help businesses take the
first steps to saving money and reducing
their environmental impact Envirowise
recommends considering the following no
cost or low cost measures:
-
Think before you print! Do you
really need to print that document
or make so many copies of it?
-
Set your printer to print on both
sides of the paper by default. It
will automatically reduce the amount
of paper you use and thus reduce
your paper budget.
-
Use recycled paper rather than
virgin paper.
-
Use 80gsm paper sheets rather than
thicker paper and avoid printing on
flash paper unless you really have
to. The thicker the paper you use
the more paper you waste.
-
Encouraging staff to re-use and
recycle, through staff awareness
training.
-
Re-use scrap paper.
-
Issue documents electronically
rather than in paper form.
-
Nominate a waste champion to
implement and promote waste
minimisation within the company.
-
Set up an employee suggestion scheme
to generate ideas.
-
Use key performance indicators (KPIs)
to set performance targets which can
be measured.
Envirowise have also launched a
free online saving calculator, which
allows you to see the sort of savings
you could make by minimising paper and
other waste.
