Tip – You can reduce the amount of pages you print by 30% by introducing a ‘follow me’ or ‘pull printing’ solution.

The reason that these schemes can have such a dramatic impact on the amount of paper printed is that they prevent unwanted prints being made. Unwanted prints? How can that be the case? If you have sent a document to print, you want it, don’t you? Well about 30% of all documents printed are either never collected from the printer or are immediately thrown away because we have spotted an error or want to make a change. We are still cavalier with paper – treating it as an abundant resource. Pull printing can help change all that.

This does involve investment in new equipment and a change in working practices in your office. Pull printing involves the removal of personal printers and installation of centrally used devices that are sophisticated enough to allow you to identify yourself (usually through a fob, swipe card or PIN number) and then ‘pull’ your print job from a queue within the system. In other words, you job is only printed when you are at the device and ready to collect it. Of course, we at eCO2 Greetings see an obvious way to save on paper as a business is to send out Christmas ecards for business instead of paper card.

The large printer manufacturers and many independents that provide Managed Print Services will do all of the analysis, planning and implementation for you.

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