Business Guide to Paper Reduction

Executive Summary

High quality vision, efficiency, and creativity are key ingredients to a successful business. While much emphasis is placed on how these factors affect a business’ product, companies are also seeking ways to improve their internal operations. Increasingly, they are finding that reducing paper consumption can improve efficiency and reduce costs.

The Problem:

The number of pages of paper consumed in U.S. offices is growing by about 20 percent each year (1). Currently, the average U.S. office worker is estimated to use a sheet of paper every 12 minutes—a ream per person every two and a half working weeks—and to dispose of 100-200 pounds of paper every year (2). For many people, this is just an assumed part of conducting business that is seldom questioned.

Yet paper use can be a large economic drain on business. There are many costs beyond the simple purchasing of paper that could be avoided. Storage, lost documents, postage, waste, and labor inefficiency all have associated expenses. For example, to store 2 million paper documents, an organization can expect to spend between $40,000 and $60,000 on filing cabinets alone. Those same files could fit on fewer than ten CD-ROMs (3) and require considerably less rented floor space. Forms are also a considerable cost to many companies. U.S. businesses spend $1 billion a year designing and printing forms, (4) yet approximately one third of the printed forms become outdated before they are used (5).

Additionally, the environmental impacts of paper use are extensive. The extraction, production, and disposal processes all create unnecessary burdens. With 70 percent of the country’s paper originating in the U.S. South, the region is losing 1.2 million acres of forest every year to industry (6). Considering the chemicals, energy, wood, water, and other resources required, producing one ton of paper uses 98 tons of various resources (7). And, despite long-term educational efforts, more paper is still going into landfills than is being collected for recycling (8).

The Solution:

Many companies have documented savings of thousands or even millions of dollars through their paper reduction efforts. This report contains case studies of Bank of America, Nike, AT&T, Alameda County, and the Moore Foundation, all of which are involved at different stages in paper reduction efforts. Each organization approaches paper reduction in a way that fits their culture and organizational structure. Through a variety of approaches, they are able to reduce costs or avoid additional costs.

Bank of America, for example, makes it optional to receive an ATM receipt. For customers who choose to get one, it is printed on 25 percent lighter weight paper. The reduction in paper weight alone saves Bank of America $500,000 every year. AT&T is giving its individual and business customers the option to be billed electronically instead of by monthly paper statements, dropping the cost of rendering bills to three cents per bill, down from $6.75 for individual bills and $17.00 for business bills.

Other smaller scale efforts can also be important parts of paper reduction. Education campaigns often inspire individuals to develop their own creative paper reduction efforts. In Alameda County, for example, one woman in the tax department reformatted the secured property tax form to use less paper, which saved the county $27,000 and 5,500 pounds of paper (9). Overall, the organizations found that as soon as they started investigating paper use, they found immediate ways to reduce waste and save money.

The Process:

Based on the case studies listed above, an expanded step-by-step guide to reducing paper use was developed. This guide includes ideas for developing paper and wood products policies, organizing a paper reduction campaign, auditing paper use, identifying and prioritizing paper reduction efforts, and establishing feedback loops. There is little limit to the ways organizations can reduce paper consumption. Eliminating unneeded printed reports, cleaning mailing lists, providing forms online, distributing reports through the internet, and many other options are available to anyone willing to ask the questions.

Conclusion:

As The Business Guide to Paper Reduction demonstrates, with dedication and planning there is significant potential to reduce paper consumption. According to Brad Allenby, the Environment, Health, and Safety Director for AT&T, these environmental initiatives are really about efficiency. Based on potential cost-savings alone, the economic justification for such efforts is substantial. And the environmental benefits of paper reduction confirm that what is good for business can be good for the environment.

You can download the full length Business Guide to Paper Reduction report in pdf format here.

Footnotes:

1 Abramovitz, Janet and Ashley Mattoon. Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape. Worldwatch Paper 149. December, 1999. Page 14.
2 Lovins, Amory, Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken. Natural Capitalism. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1999. Page 174.
3 Sellen, Abigail and Richard Harper. The Myth of the Paperless Office. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2002. Page 28.
4 Sellen, 27. Cited from a study carried out by the International Data Corporation.
5 Sellen, 29. Cited from Skapinker, M. “Warm for Forms.” Byte, April, 1991.
6 Dogwood Alliance. Chip Mill Fact Sheet. Viewed September 25, 2001. www.dogwoodalliance.org/chipmill.asp.
7 Lovins, 50. Cited from Liedtke, C. “Material Intensity of Paper and Board Production in Western Europe.” Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, August, 1993.
8 Kinsella, Susan. Personal Interview. April 1, 2002.
9 Paper Cuts: Conserving Resources Through Paper Reduction. Video produced by Ideas in Motion for the Alameda County General Services Agency. Copyright 1998.

This report was prepared by Heather Sarantis for ForestEthics and the University of Montana.

Business Guide to Paper Reduction © 2002 ForestEthics – All Rights Reserved