What is the best way to promote a paperless environment?

Question

One problem I have with a modern office is that people still tend to create physical copies of digital media (such as program manuals and specifications). I understand that for somethings it is prudent to create a physical copy but many of these physical copies go mostly unused, they just sit on a shelf to maybe one day be flipped through to look up a single piece of information. This is not only a waste of paper but also space and the time that it takes to print out and collate all of these printed documents. It also takes more time to utilize because these items are not capable of being indexed and searched like digital copies.

What are some good ways to promote a paperless environment in the workplace? My company has already implemented a company Wiki. So far the it seems to have made an impact on our use of paper, but some people still think of it as being too much of a hassle.

Answer 1

Distribute documents electronically (e.g. Sharepoint) and charge people to print something out. Make sure people have nice, big screens so they can easily read text on screen and LCDs so the refresh rate doesn't hurt their eyes.

Answer 2

Get rid of the printers.

Seriously.

I realize that's not realistic. I've tried to help my wife's store go paperless and that's just 4 employees but because the printer is still there they just won't do it. It helped that I set the default printer on all the workstations to print to a Windows share using a PDF writer print driver so some of the problem is solved (we have a few boxes of daily sales reports in her office which fortunately are no longer generated).

My company brings laptops to our Monday status meetings and then has printed copies of the agenda circulated (which we all have a copy of in email). You just can't win really.

Answer 3

This all depends on personal preference. Some people like to read on computer screen. But some people might do not prefer screen. They tend to take the print out of every possible thing.

IMO you can promote the use of duplex printing. Infact printing multiple pages on same A4 sheet. This should reduce the wastage to some limit.

Otherwise I know a company which publishes the weekly list of people who got maximum print outs on working areas. This will certainly discourage some people who just take a print out for the sake of taking print out.

Answer 4

It won't work for everybody, for sure, but I recently spent a year at a small web development company (under 25 employees) that had no printers and no copiers. Only the owner had one little printer in his locked office. Since they never had any printers or copiers, their work patterns had evolved to not use paper.

This was such a shock to me, as I traditionally work with a lot of paper. I use it to partly control my own workflow -- if it needs to be done, there's a piece of paper (email, Word doc, printed-out bug tracker task) on my desk about it. I'd make notes on the document about the steps I needed to do to complete the task.

Of course, we used a bug tracking/change control system. So, all of my to-do's for my web coding were in that system.

I learned to organize my email better, and to have a good file folder structure in Windows. Ironically, I was more meticulous about deleting unnecessary electronic documents. I only kept the useful stuff. My email inbox was always empty, because everything got promptly moved to a folder.

Everybody's desk was really clean, and we had no file drawers. We did all have at least two monitors.

Answer 5

As others have mentioned, you may not win, but if your general inclination is to go green, tips and tricks can be found at my friend's blog:

Green User Group

Answer 6

Just because you prefer not to use paper doesn't mean that everyone else can work effectively that way. Some of us find the screen hard to read at times. My boyfriend who recently died couldn't read a resolution smaller than 800X600. That means you can't really see much at one time on the screen.

Personally if I am trying to find something like where a missing end should go in a long stored proc, I find that I can see it much faster by printing the whole thing out and looking at it that way. Plus I find it handier to take notes on a piece of paper than an electronic document.

Also, I read extremely quickly, I can read a document probably 3-4 times faster on paper than on screen (in part becasue I don't have to stop to scroll). Yeah I have a big enough monitor to see a whole page at a time, but with my bifocals, I can't actually read it when the type is that small. Why should I waste my time reading on screen when paper is faster for large documents? And if I need to reference back and forth between pages while reading, it is much faster to flip to a page than to search for it electronically.

And remember not everyone has large monitors or the dual monitors that many developers have. They therefore can't see much on the screen at one time and can't see two pages of a document pulled up simulataneously when they need to refer back and forth while reading.

So basically what I'm saying is that paperless offices are less efficient for many people which is why they aren't really popular.

Answer 7

Fire.

(sorry couldn't resist)

Answer 8

Getting rid of printer adn copiers would force everyone to go paperless, but I don't think it is a ideal solution. I would recommend setting up a good recycling program instead. Paper is easily recycled. Also most paper today comes from managed forests. The impact on the environment is minimal. Also get some good scanners, OCR software, and set up servers with plenty of storage to work as virtual filing cabinets.

Answer 9

Don't.

I find having a manual or programming reference a lot more useful when I can have it laying open on my desk next to me rather than tabbing back and forth between that and Eclipse and all the other stuff I have open at once. Besides, I like being able to stuff post-its all over the place, underline important passages, etc. Losing the ability to grep the document really isn't an issue. If it's a reference that I know well, I won't have any problem finding the passage I need, and then it will be handily on my desk where I just glance over rather than moving windows around on the screen.

If, for some reason, this is something you REALLY need to do, get rid of the printers and give your developers two or three large LCDs each. I think a better alternative is to set the printers to do automatic duplexing, and provide a comb binder in the copy room. That will encourage people to treat the printouts as "books", rather than a stack of paper that ends up getting thrown out at some point. Rather than throwing the packet out when they are done, it goes on their bookshelf and they pull it out again when they realize they still need it, rather than printing another copy.

If you're so concerned about being "green", buy recycled paper and have more recycle bins than trash cans. Make it easier to recycle than to throw away.

Answer 10

Go buy yourself a really good document scanner. You will always have some amount of incoming paper, if you can easily convert those to digital it will help greatly. I'd recommend a Fujitsu ScanSnap 510.

And make sure you have really good damn backups :)

Answer 11

I like paper, and I think it's the best surface for reading. In my opinion, you shouldn't ban printing - or force the office to go paperless.

Instead, maybe you could encourage reuse. Once a document has been printed and read - distribute it to colleagues who might also need it. The 'round-robin envelope' (for want of a better name) is a feature of many traditional office environments which is pretty good in this respect.

Also print double sided.

Answer 12

First of all, everybody needs to be using LCD, as it is easier to read off of.

Second, tell everybody they can get a second LCD, only if they promise to not print stuff they can read on their LCD.

Also give a short lesson on how to use two monitors effectively. (Mostly, one for main work, second for reading)