Reduce Waste from Printing
- carinebataille
- Sep 30, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 13, 2023
Key figures:
Hong Kong offices consume 190 million sheets of paper a week (1).
If stacked up, it would be equivalent to the height of more than 51 International Finance Centres (the IFC is about 415 meters tall).
In 2020, the second largest constituent of Municipal Solid Waste was paper: around 2.6 tonnes per day (24,5% of MSW) were disposed at landfills (2).
How many times have you forgotten to pick up your print job from the printer?
How often the paper you printed ends up in the trash at the end of your work day?
Think twice before printing! Let’s reduce waste from printing together!
Did you know?
Paper waste has many environmental impacts, such as:
Deforestation (paper comes from trees)
Pollution from paper production (among the top largest industrial polluters of air / water / soil)
Post-consumer paper decomposition (paper decomposition emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is much more potent than CO2)
Energy/water consumption (it requires lots of water & energy to produce paper)
TAKE ACTION
=> Reduce: today, printing is less required than 10 years ago, thanks to online collaborative tools where you can review, markup or comment documents in a more effective way.
=> Print only if really required: make sure the document is ready for printing, print only the portions that you need, choose black and white, draft mode, double sided whenever you can, and never forget to pick up your prints!
=> Reuse: in the office, reuse paper when you can, for example to take notes.
=> At last, Recycle : always recycle your paper.
Do you have any idea of how many pages you print per year? If badge printing is set up in your office, ask your green team to provide a report of the number of pages printed per employee to raise awareness among your colleagues.
References:
(2) https://www.wastereduction.gov.hk/sites/default/files/msw2020.pdf
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