Printing Fact #2: Printing is More Than a Significant Waste of Trees
Published, August 20, 2012
Although printer maintenance and ink are a significant cost to the Department of the Navy, we must not forget that the environmental and budgetary impact of those printed pages really adds up! It is estimated that the average employee uses approximately 10,000 sheets of paper per year. In addition to the environmental impact of producing this much paper, it is also costly to the Department. ...
According to a Citigroup-Environmental Defense study, the actual cost of printing (equipment, ink and paper) is between six and 13 cents per page, or $600 to $1,300 a year per employee. This means that the annual cost of printing by the 900,000 Sailors, Marines and DON civilians is more than $500,000,000.
A study conducted by Lexmark found that 17 percent of pages printed were wasted pages, such as the page at the end of a web printout with just a URL or banner ad at the top, and legalese at the end of a document.
Some easy ways to save on printing paper costs:
- Double-sided printing: Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company, found that organizations can potentially reduce annual paper costs by 30 percent by selecting double-sided printing as the default option.
- N-Up printing: Selecting the "multiple pages per sheet" option within Printing Preferences can be an effective way of including two or more pages on one sheet of paper.
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