How do you print yours?

By Savitri Patel, Associate Editor, PPI Europe, RISI

BRUSSELS, Aug. 13, 2008 (RISI) - Having just seen “Wanted”, yet another film which suggests that life as an office worker is the circle of hell missing from Dante’s Inferno, it tickled me to discover that actually the average office is brimming with crazy types, recklessly printing off a forest’s worth of trees just to get us through the tedium of the day. Possibly whilst cackling madly.

Envirowise, a government-funded program providing advice on sustainability to UK businesses, has identified five types of “printing culprits”:

The Pointless Printer, who prints everything just because they like to have a hard copy of all documents, even e-mails,

The Competitive Printer, who thinks that the bigger the pile of “crucial” documents on their desk, the more important they will look,

The “Old School” Printer, who feels that they can’t possibly comment on an e-mail request without printing it off to read it, and is incapable of editing documents on screen,

The Hasty Printer, who presses “Print” before checking the length of the document, and then stands over the printer looking pained, as though the printer has operated on its own initiative,

The Sneaky Printer, who is acutely aware of over-printing but can’t live without paper, and makes furtive dashes back and forth to collect what is possibly personal printing without being caught,

The one we should be aspiring to, of course, is the Pedestal Printer, who prints double-sided, on recycled paper, only prints what is essential and likes to share their documents with the rest of the team.

According to Envirowise, office workers in the UK can get through 22 sheets of paper a day, with several studies suggesting that much of this is wasted printing that goes straight in the bin. Predictably, the forecasts of a “paperless office” have not yet come to pass.

Good news or bad news?

It’s encouraging that the focus of Envirowise’s advice is on reducing “waste”, not simply on reducing paper. Paper itself is not identified as “an evil”. It’s also worth noting that waste is in no one’s interests. The more paper waste is generated, the more common it is for paper itself to be viewed as waste. Any short-term gain in terms of sales is ultimately outweighed by the long-term damage to the image of paper.

The Envirowise website urges, “Before you buy paper, ask the following questions:

• What is its recycled content?
• How much post-consumer waste does it contain?
• Has the environmental impact of its manufacture been minimised?”

Guidelines like these work both ways, and help the industry to understand what consumers are looking for in order to tailor products and services accordingly. If we office drones (sulking because no one has recognised our hidden potential to become deadly assassins) abuse the end product, that’s really no one’s fault but our own.

At the end of “Wanted”, the “hero” demands, rather smugly, “This is me taking control of my life. My destiny. What have you done lately?” Well, although I didn’t get around to kissing Angelina Jolie, I also didn’t kill anyone. And I print double-sided.

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