9. Ditch the envelope labels.
Have your office admins print addresses directly onto envelopes. Save address labels until you absolutely need them. Most modern-day printers can print directly onto envelopes, so you’ll never need to double up or mess with tricky address label sheets.
10. One memo, one copy.
Send around one copy of an intra-office memo and have all employees sign it and pass it on to confirm that they read it. This way, you only have to print a single copy.
11. Compost it.
Use scrap paper and/or shredded paper for composting in your office community garden. If you don’t have an office garden, now is the perfect time to start. You don’t have to stop at recycling paper for your compost bin. You can take all of the food waste and biological waste from your lunchroom and put it toward your compost pile. This will help your office throw out less trash and have a nice community project that will help with team building.
12. Protect shipments with shredded paper.
While this won’t necessarily save you on paper used at the printer or copier, it will help you keep costs down by creatively reusing shredded paper. If your company ships items out to either customers or other offices, you can pack the items with shredded paper instead of commercial packing peanuts. Make sure that the recycled paper contents aren’t confidential.
13. Reduce the printing area on your documents.
If you can get two or three pages worth of information onto a single side of a sheet of paper, you can reduce your paper usage by up to 200%. Reduce your font sizes and your printing areas whenever possible. Printing off a PowerPoint presentation to review? Print two or four slides per side of the page to get more bang for your printing buck.
How do you run an eco-friendly office? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Photo: Unabashedly Prep
Carla Eaton is a freelance writer who enjoys writing on the topics of business, technology, and design, and currently blogs for Inkfarm.com, who specializes in Dell printer cartridges. Carla has a B.A. in Mass Media with a Minor in Art and Design.
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