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The challenge in any office is to reduce and control print to give a consistent and cohesive print policy throughout the organisation.  This can then feed into a corporate environmental policy that complies with relevant legislation and ensures that you reduce your carbon footprint.

Offices will always need to print, so eliminating this is simply not practical or desirable.  The point is to work towards reducing your print output as much as possible while retaining a fully functioning and productive office.  To do this you must examine how to reduce the volume of print and the amount of paper and toner used and then combine this into efficient and effective print throughout the organisation.

Reducing the volume of print involves the challenge that users will always want and need to print.  However a great deal of printed paper is simply wasted, and some is just not collected from the paper tray at a device.  Eliminating this waste can significantly lower the environmental impact of any organisation.  A simple way to do this is to ensure each user only prints what they need to by introducing a print management system where users have to ‘release’ the print job at the device by using a pin or key card.

A further way to reduce your carbon footprint is to reduce the number of pages printed.  While this appears the same as reducing the volume of print it is actually concerned with ensuring efficient use of print.  This is best seen through implementing duplex or double-sided print which will dramatically reduce the amount of paper printed.

Controlling and managing print from applications will further influence and improve environmental performance.  This is particularly the case when printing from Microsoft Outlook, which typically makes up 20% of a firms output – reducing this will have a major impact on the amount of print undertaken.  Consider that many times when printing an email the user will print a whole conversation with a number of disclaimers in the footer, having the ability to manipulate the number of conversations printed and eliminating the disclaimers will dramatically alter the pages printed.

Kappris can split the email exchange into separate conversations so that a user can view and select which parts to print.  This preview means the user can print parts of an email conversation that do not immediately follow one another.  Firms can look at reducing their email print output by up to 50%, resulting in a significantly lower carbon footprint and improved environmental performance.  Importantly, this will work across a whole suite of applications from Outlook to Adobe, and includes directing print to specific paper trays for maximum efficiency.

Lowering the levels of toner used in print ensures that fewer toner cartridges are sent to landfill.  A print driver can do this through controlling the amount of toner coverage on each print.  This is particularly useful when printing from Outlook and for internal and draft or file copies.

Measuring print output allows a quantification of the impact on the environment of a firm.  Reporting the number of pages, percentage of toner used  , and other data can give a calculation of the cost of each print and identify wasteful users, departments, applications and devices.  This can then be used to determine print savings that can be made by implementing changes to print behaviour and create a new and effective environmental print policy.

Reporting and analysing this print policy before and after implementing Kappris enables you to thoroughly understand and introduce changes that will lead to environmental savings.  This can demonstrate the savings that have been made as a result of the print driver and ensure that your organisation is on target to meet key environmental goals.

If you would like to reduce your carbon footprint please  contact us