GreenBusinessConsulting.com

The carbon output related to paper is shocking: I recently worked with a technology company whose carbon output related to paper use was 7,100 lbs. PER MONTH! Even at a company where most work is electronic, they were still going through 100,000 sheets of paper per month.

It’s also shocking how easy it is to reduce this footprint. With just a few small changes, the technology company was able to reduce its carbon footprint related to paper in half. Here’s how they did it:

1. Purchase Chlorine-Free Paper with 30% Recycled Content
2. Default Printers to Double-Sided Printing
3. Make It Easy to Recycle Paper

Purchase Chlorine-Free Paper with 30% Recycled Content
The environmental effects of manufacturing paper include carbon emissions, deforestation and toxic chlorine bleaching.

Traditional paper manufacturing and its waste create 7.1 lbs. of CO2 emissions per pound. These emissions are created by the manufacture and transport of paper, and by cutting trees for paper pulp.

Paper is the largest single use of trees that are harvested worldwide, and the use is growing. Therefore purchasing paper made with recycled post-consumer content emits less carbon and saves trees. One ream (500 sheets) of 100% recycled paper results in 5 pounds less carbon.

Finally make sure your paper is also totally chlorine-free. One of the byproducts of chlorine is dioxide – a bioaccumulative toxin that is harmful to aquatic ecosystems and humans – it’s linked to cancer, birth defects, and endocrine disorders.

The best paper is post-consumer recycled waste paper that is also Totally Chlorine Free (TCF). Here are two companies that offer this type of paper:
Greenline Paper Company
TreeCycle

Even if everyone in your company isn’t quite ready to make the switch to 100% recycled paper, which can be thinner and less white, you can still switch to 30%-70% recycled content paper that looks and prints exactly like traditionally manufactured paper. In the case of the technology company, they switch to only 30% recycled paper and still reduced their carbon output by 1.5 pounds per ream. Over the course of a month, this reduced their carbon output by 300 pounds.

Default Printers to Double-Sided Printing
Ask your IT department to make double-sided printing the default on all company printers. If a user needs to print single-sided for a report, they can easily switch their settings. We calculated that even if only half of all print jobs were double-sided, this would still reduce the carbon output by 1,700 pounds per month.

Make It Easy to Recycle Paper
If the recycling bin is in the copy room, how many employees are going to save their old paper and walk it over to the recycling bin? Fifty million tons of paper still ends up in the landfills each year, so companies need to make it easy for employees to recycle.

I suggested that the technology company purchase nice-looking individual recycling bins that could sit on each person’s desk. They chose the Deep Capacity Recycling Tray from Recy-CAL Supply Company for $4.60 each. They also took the opportunity to do some internal branding and placed the company logo on each recycling bin.

Since the technology company was already paying a cleaning service to empty the trash at each desk every night, for just a little more per month the cleaning company agreed to empty the recycling bins as well.
Just remember that Post-It notes are not recyclable – they gum up the machines that recycle paper.

We conservatively estimated that the technology company would be able to recycle 65% of the paper it used, or 488 pounds of paper. For every pound of paper that’s recycled, 4 pounds of carbon are saved because that paper will be used to create recycled paper. Recycling further reduced the technology company’s carbon output by 1,940 pounds per month.

Altogether, we reduced the technology company’s carbon output per month from 7,100 pounds to 3,150. While the company still had a way to go before it was carbon neutral, it’s moving in a direction that its employees can be proud of, and it motivates customers to choose them over similar competition that aren’t going green.