Top Printing Tips to Save Money
February 2010

It’s a common sight in many offices: wastebaskets filled to the brim with paper. Look next to any desk or printer, and you’re likely to find a stack of misprints, extra copies and other discarded paper waste.

So here are a few things to keep in mind before you send that next job to the printer – and a few tips to keep costs down when you do need to print.

Do you really want to print that?
You should always consider whether what you’re about to print really needs to be printed. For example, if you have to share a document with a number of people at a meeting, are there other ways to display it without printing out a copy for everyone? If it’s a large meeting, maybe use a projector to display the information, or just display it on a notebook screen at a smaller meeting. You could also save the document to a shared folder and provide everyone with a link, or send it as an email attachment.

Conservation: waste not, want not
If you’ve decided you absolutely must print a document, there are some ways to reduce the cost and environmental impact. If it’s just for casual use, you can print in ‘draft’ mode and by reusing misprints by printing on the “clean” side of the page. Most important, when you print on both the front and back of each page, you reduce your paper use by up to 50 percent. You can make this easy by purchasing a printer with a built-in duplexer, and setting the default settings in your driver to “print on both sides”.

Implement recycling efforts
Recycling can take place at multiple levels of your business. First, the obvious point: have a recycling bin, and make sure any discarded paper goes into it rather than the waste bin. Simple in theory, but it’s easy to forget, so make sure you have bins strategically placed around the office and particularly next to the printer/copier.

Use recycled paper
Try to use recycled paper, which is made from materials that would otherwise end up in our landfills. By incorporating this “waste” into the paper manufacturing process and eliminating the energy use and production costs associated with virgin pulp and whitening agents, everybody benefits.

Keep energy costs low
Paper and printing supplies aren’t the only thing you can conserve. You can save energy and money simply by turning off printing equipment when it isn’t in use.

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