Go green in your office with recycled paper!

If you’re in your office at this exact moment, what is it that you hear? A photocopier? A Printer? Now look around you and what do you see? Notepads and scraps of paper perhaps. Each with some important message hastily written on them. On the floor by each is probably a small waste basket filled with crumpled paper. In short, all around you is paper that is being used for one reason or another.

It’s hard to imagine an office being run without paper products: notebooks, scratch pads, envelopes. The list goes on and on but the natural resources consumed to feed an office are unfortunately not in unlimited supply. The solution? Go green in your office with recycled paper. A green office isn’t just one that uses its resources effectively, it’s an office that knows how to use recycled paper products in order to maximise its efficiency in the workplace.

Be Smart About Paper

There are a lot of ways to be smart about paper use while ensuring your green office is being run effectively. Some of the smartest strategies for using recycled paper involve just common sense. For example, when you have to make copies is it absolutely necessary to print everything separately? Whenever possible, print on the front and the back of each piece of paper you run through the copier and/or printer.

Or if you have cancelled print jobs, re-use that paper for unofficial printing tasks. Make use of the two-sided capability of copy machines and change the printer/copier’s default setting to double-sided printing. It’s just a matter of working smarter: printing on both sides of a paper decreases the total number of pages required for a specific job, and ensures your green office saves resources by using paper that is recycled.

Notepads and You

Another big paper-waster is adhesive notepads. Ever wonder how many notes you peel off during the course of the day? Notepads have saved the lives of countless employees in countless situations, but the truth is notepads are an enormous waster of paper and resources. How much of a waste you ask?

Consider this:
- Just one tree can produce over 168,000 pencils and 17 reams of paper.
- In order to produce one ton of paper, you need to consume three tons of wood. Which in turn releases nearly 6000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- One sheet of paper uses more than 13 ounces of water. A higher rate of consumer than many other products.

A common sense solution for saving trees and cutting down on the amount of “stickies” that you consume is to use e-notes instead. The notepad stays in your monitor and never falls off.

Think about it: the ways you can reduce and reuse in your office and out is almost endless. By keeping your office green and reducing and recycling the amount of paper you use on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, the more there will be for future generations.