Environment – Simple Steps to Live Green
What You Can Do At Work
If your company has a paper recycling system, recycle your discarded paper.
Just over half of all paper in South Africa is not recycled – formal recyclers recover much of this material from dustbins and landfill sites – which is not ideal. Most employees are simply not thinking when they toss paper into the bin. A good amount of this paper might be recyclable – not disposable – as a wide range of paper materials can now be recycled.
For example, all the following papers can be recycled with the proper facilities: Computer, copier, printer paper, all white and colored papers, fax paper, adding machine tapes, tab and time cards, accounting ledgers, posters and bulletins, NCR carbonless forms, Post-It notes, magazines, mail order catalogs, newspapers, all types of envelopes including ones with windows, labels, coated and colored, all mail pamphlets and brochures, unwaxed cardboard, and manila or colored folders, and even the slip-off sleeves on paper coffee cups.
Tapping into this “urban forest” of discarded paper can greatly diminish South African’s ecological footprint. In the manufacturing process of recycled paper compared to virgin paper production, not only is less virgin forest destroyed and land converted, but:
- 74% Less air pollution is generated
- 35% Less water pollution is generated
- 58% Less water is required
- 64% Less energy is required
Print and photocopy double-sided (duplex) copies as the norm, and minimize single-sided printing and photocopying to absolute necessities.
It takes 10 times more energy to manufacture paper as it does to print and/or photocopy images on to paper. Hence, duplexing greatly reduces the carbon (greenhouse gas emissions) and ecological footprint relative to one-sided printing/copying.
In addition, when combined with copying two pages per side, the amount of paper used in photocopiers can be reduced by up to 75 percent. Such duplexing also reduces the weight and cost of mailing documents, as well as substantially shrinking the cabinet and floor space required to archive and store documents in bookcases and filing cabinets.
Konica Minolta‘s fantastic new range of workgroup printers will give you a full report on duplex / mono prints monthly enabling you to calculate green savings for annual reports.
Konica Minolta’s Managed Print Services – Colour yourself Green
Managed print services are an excellent way to manage resources within your company, to get an accurate audit of the amount of ink and paper that is used, to ensure that each department adheres to responsible printing practices, cutting down on waste and ultimately saving costs as well as helping the environment.
Encourage your office to purchase Greener Paper.
To lessen your impact on the environment it pays you to use green friendly paper. The ideal would be to use 100 percent post-consumer waste non-chlorinated paper. Although the cost may be a little higher than bleached virgin paper, the cost to the environment is significantly lower.
Yes, South Africa does have a recycled alternative. Sappi Fine Paper recently announced that it is supplying office paper manufactured using 50% recycled content and 50% virgin wood fibre derived from independently-certified and sustainable sources, offering end users an environmentally-sound choice without compromising on quality.
Use black-and-white Econo-mode computer printing settings for all draft copies, and avoid color printing unless absolutely necessary.
Additional energy savings and toner savings can be achieved by setting your printer default setting for eco-mode (typically the lowest DPI setting) for all printing of internal and draft copies.
The life of the toner cartridge depends on the amount of toner that print jobs require. When printing text at five percent coverage an HP toner cartridge lasts an average of 15,000 pages. (A typical business letter is about 5% coverage). Econo-mode can use 50% less toner, enabling twice as many pages to be printed.
Press the EnergySaver (or PowerSaver) button after photocopying, and check to see if the photocopier is turned off at the end of the day.
By pressing the EnergySaver button after photocopying you can significantly reduce the electric wattage consumed by photocopies normally left in the print mode. Checking at the end of the day to ensure it has been turned off will generate even larger electricity savings overnight and on weekends. Post signs above the copiers to remind staff, and if you walk by and hear the hum of a copier, that indicates it is in print mode, so hit the EnergySaver button.
In fax machines, use the other side of already-used, single-sided paper that was going to be discarded.
Many employees dispose of printer/copier paper that is clean on the backside and could easily be reused in fax machines or for printing draft copies of material. Other institutions like the World Resources Institute have implemented programs that recycle one-sided paper and dedicate certain fax and printer machines to just use this used paper. As a result, WRI paper consumption has declined by tens of percent.
