How do company printers affect the environment?

What do mayflies and 45% of all sheets of office paper have in common? They both have a lifespan of a single day. 

However, whereas mayflies play a key role in our ecosystem, an officer printer’s environmental impact can be surprising – especially if we’re not careful about how we print. 

Printing is a power that you should use responsibly – and there are smarter (and even more cost-effective) ways to print that don’t involve the hassle of running an office printer. 

So, what’s there to know about environmentally-friendly printing (and why your office printer might not be the best at it?) Read on. 

 

How do printers affect the environment? 

When looking at an office printer’s environmental impact, there are five main ways that printing can be ‘inefficient’, or even harmful. Some happen before you print, others happen during the printing process, and there are by-products, too.  

These are: 

  • Waste Streams (such as paper and packaging) 

  • Energy Use (including electricity to run the printer, or ventilation to keep it cool) 

  • Water Use (currently, 1 sheet of standard office paper requires 1.5 cups of water to produce) 

  • Transport of all goods (essentially, emissions generated by vehicles involved) 

  • Ink (which includes volatile organic compounds that can be toxic if not disposed of properly) 

With all of this potential to cause damage to the environment, it’s tempting to say that the negatives outweigh the positives – especially as companies embrace using computers to do work that would previously have needed a printer and paper.  

So that leads us to one simple question… 

 

Is printing bad for the environment? 

Let’s answer the key question: is printing paper bad for the environment? 

No – at least, not inherently. 

However, it all depends on how you print. 

For example, if you leave a printer running day and night and print single-sided, full-colour sheets (particularly if what you’re printing could have been sent as an email) then your printer’s environmental impact will be unnecessarily high. 

On the other hand, there are more ‘environmentally-friendly printing practices’ that you can adopt immediately, such as: 

  • Printing in black-and-white instead of in colour 

  • Printing double-sided, instead of using two sheets 

  • Using the most energy-efficient office printer you can afford 

However, there are ways to further reduce emissions when printing – and you can even ditch the office printer in the process. 

 

What are environmentally-friendly print-on-demand services? 

As you may know, using print-on-demand services – such as Printt – removes the expenses and issues associated with owning and operating an office printer. 

However, trusting a printing partner such as Printt can also be more energy efficient as well. Here’s how: 

  1. At the most basic level, our facilities – and those of our partners – are equipped with highly-efficient printers, which minimises energy waste when printing.  

  1. We also encourage our partners to recycle ink cartridges using Xerox’s Green World Alliance scheme, which prevents waste cartridges from going to landfills. 

  1. When selecting how you want to print your document, we also offer all the options you need to put some of those environmentally-friendly printing practices into use, too. 

Pro tip: When ordering your prints, printing in bulk doesn’t just reduce the fuel used per page when delivering your order, but it also saves you money, too. 

However, another thing your office printer certainly can’t do is give back to the environment with interest. 

Thanks to our partnerships with One Tree Planted and the Woodland Carbon Scheme, we plant one tree for every 5,000 pages that we print. 

Each tree provides over 8,500 pages back and absorbs 48 pounds of CO2. So far, Printt’s community has been responsible for planting over 300 trees. 

You can read all about printing more sustainably with Printt here – but if you want to reduce your office printer’s environmental impact, the best way is to get started with Printt. There’s no long-term commitment for you and your team – just simple, pay-as-you-go team printing. 

We’ll even give you a 30% discount off your first delivery. 

Alvin Kibalama