We’ve made another green step this week. Chris “the Whiz”
and I finally finished our paperless media kit for Expo East. The natural
products expo is in Boston
next week, and we’ll be unveiling our latest eco-innovation. It’s extremely
exciting to release it without a scrap of paper. It’s eco plus it’s writing, so
I’m in ecowriter heaven.

Why go paperless? Well, you can save some trees and some
clutter. A paperless system is easy to organize and share with your colleagues.
Think of all the catalogs, press kits, advertising offers, and promotions you
get in the mail. I actually insist that all publications provide only an
electronic version of their media kits. I just don’t have space in my office
for 150 media kits ranging from 10-50 pages. Also, how many times have you
handed something to a co-worker and it never returned. Hooray file sharing!

Paperless office tips

-- Get everyone on board. If you don’t make the change
public, you’ll have that same stack of memos to go through every day. Let your
customers and service providers know that your company strives to reduce paper.
Add a “Please consider the environment before printing” line on your emails.
Tell them you’ll send e-invoices and set up e-bill pay and direct deposits for
payroll.

-- You’re not just saving the environment. The cost of
paper, wear and tear on printing machines, ink and toner, and storage matter
too. Plus, think of all the time you’ll save when you’re not searching for that
sheet of paper that was “just here a minute ago.” Also, consider what
buyerzone.com puts out there: If it takes five minutes to retrieve and replace
a paper file and an employee works with ten paper files per day, that's 216
hours a year - over five weeks' time - spent walking files around. At $20/hour,
that's $4300 per year. A system that lets employees find and work with those
documents without ever leaving their desks can instantly slash those costs.

-- BACK IT UP. Don’t be the victim of a server crash.

--Realize that some things will still need to be printed.
Don’t beat yourself up. Do the job right. If you can be 80% paperless, then set
that as your goal. Evaluate the success of your paperless campaign and see if
there is room to decrease paper more the next year.

Share