Paperless offices: Pipe dream or near-future reality?

A paperless office would be ideal for the environment, but could it be possible?

There are many ways of lowering your paperwork, and considering what you need to print would be a step into reducing paper consumption.

Reducing printing would also decrease the amount of money that comes out of the overall business budget.

Going paperless isn’t a complete pipe dream, but cutting it completely would be far more difficult than you may imagine. Important things like contracts and other agreements make it hard to get rid of paper completely.

If things need to be printed, it isn’t going to destroy the earth, but overuse will definitely have an impact.

It’s worth considering a more energy-efficient printer if it’s necessary that you have paper documents. Epson, for example, has brought out an inkjet printer that uses 96 percent less energy than a toner printer.

Plus, you can also pick up cost-effective replacement ink cartridges online for further savings.

Once upon a time, desks were filled with post-it notes, tags, paper and piles of unread documents which were eventually filed in storage cabinets. Luckily, that isn’t appealing to many people, and more companies are swapping post-it notes for the Notes app.

While this certainly seems attractive, it’s not a reality for everyone. Lawyers deal with a heavy influx of paperwork on a daily basis.

Although they could also reduce their paperwork, it’s difficult to read in detail without having it directly in front of you – especially when you’re looking for mistakes.

Some documents are also too important to leave on a computer with the ability to break down or wipe itself clean. Things need to be stored, and in some cases, filing cabinets can be the safest way to do that.

While there is a necessity in some cases to have paper in the office, there are endless reasons why it should be avoided, aside from saving the earth and less clutter.

Although paper is affordable to buy, in the long run, it can add up. When you’re churning out hundreds of paper every day, printing, postage and storage space will definitely add up – especially if you’re keeping copies.

Ultimately, it’s possible to decrease your paper usage, but whether it can go completely has high potential to be nothing but a pipe dream.

Unfortunately, sometimes physical copies are far more accessible than paper. Particularly if you’re not always on the same computer, as some documents might be stored elsewhere, making it difficult to provide your files on demand.

If you can think of ways to decrease your paper use, it’s worth doing so. Unnecessary paper usually ends up in the bin, and while it’s recyclable, the increase in demand for paper has a serious impact on our trees, resulting in more being chopped down yearly than ever.

We won’t be able to ever cut paper out completely, but we can work to reduce our consumption of it.

Main image by Ag Ku from Pixabay