How Paperless Are You?

Posted on Jul 31, 2010 in Records Management News

As I printed out an indus­try arti­cle on busi­ness records stor­age to read, I real­ized that I’m not doing my part in help­ing the com­pany go paper­less. Sure, we offer paper­less solu­tions, but it didn’t hit home how much paper I waste until read­ing AIIM’s report 8 Rea­sons You Need a Strat­egy for Man­ag­ing Infor­ma­tion – Before It’s Too Late (www. AIIM.org/8 things):

There are over 4 tril­lion paper doc­u­ments in the U.S., grow­ing at a rate of 22% per year

For 56% of orga­ni­za­tions, the vol­ume of paper records is increasing

The aver­age office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year and wastes about 1,410 of these pages

With the aver­age cost of each wasted page being about six cents, a com­pany with 500 employ­ees could be spend­ing $42,000 per year on wasted prints
Then I looked around on my desk to see just exactly how much paper I use. From print­ing out arti­cles and proofs to Web pages and specs, I con­tribute to the waste. I guess I’m still so used to hav­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion in my hands that I never stopped hit­ting the print but­ton. Now I have to get used to hav­ing that infor­ma­tion just on my desktop.

So as my com­pany helps tran­si­tion other orga­ni­za­tions to the paper­less future, I also have to do my part. I’ve already switched to paper­less state­ments and bills at home, but it’s time to do the same at work. Feel free to share your ideas for going paper­less as well.

For More Infor­ma­tion: http://blog.archivesystems.com/records-management-services/?&tag=business%20records%20storage

Craig Abram­son
Online Mar­ket­ing Man­ager
Archive Sys­tems, Inc.
Chang­ing the Way the World Man­ages Documents

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