The Road to 'Wise Print'–Part 3

Print the right quantity at the right quality for the right price

In my last posting, I proposed that by better managing your print environment, you can pay less for print, while having a dramatic environmental impact, and offered "print less" as the ultimate way to realize both benefits. I also claimed that my "itty bitty rules for why people print" are helping to keep print volumes from going down in spite of today's high levels of computerization. But, in fact, print volumes are actually going up!

This is due to a number of factors, not the least of which is that the proliferation–and in most cases the commoditization–of imaging devices such as printers, copiers and scanners has contributed significantly to the dramatic increase in print volumes in recent years.

Another reason is that because the speed and quality of office printers is much better these days, especially on the colour front, a wave of new applications is enabling the creation and printing of high-quality, highly customized marketing materials. As a result, a growing amount of work that has traditionally gone to commercial printers is now being printed internally, thus driving up print volumes internal to the organization.

It may come as a surprise, but Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems are also driving up print volumes. It's easy to be misled into thinking that an ECM solution, or a collaboration solution such as Microsoft SharePoint, with documents being created, stored and shared electronically, would result in less hardcopy printing. Not so! Studies show that, on average, an electronic document is printed four times–it's a lot easier to distribute a document in electronic format, for example, so many more people get to see it and thus can choose to print it … ah, there's that Haptic Response kicking in again that I mentioned last time! By way of example, the studies indicate that when e-mail is introduced into an environment, printing increases by 40%.

Against this backdrop of increasing print volumes, and thus printing costs and environmental impact, Compugen's "print less" approach is resonating well with many customers. However, in the book I'm working on–"EcoWise Print: Helping the Earth AND your Bottom Line"–I extend this thinking to incorporate the whole gamut of additional best practices associated with optimizing and better managing a print environment. I call it "wise printing"—printing the right quantity at the right quality for the right cost.

In my next post, I'll finish up the first part of this series by exploring some of the ways to actually reduce print volumes, and lay the groundwork for exploring other aspects of a Managed Print Services environment.

The Road to ‘Wise Print' – Part 2

The least expensive and most environmentally friendly page is the one that never gets printed at all

In my last post, I mentioned the book I am writing–"EcoWise Printing™: Gaining the Full Value of Printing in a Responsible Manner"–to create awareness about the financial and environmental costs of printing, and offered some reasons why I think most organizations are still struggling to understand how much they actually print and how much it's costing them.

One reason for this that I didn't cover is that print always seems to be only on the periphery of IT's radar. It represents only 15% of IT's budget and 15% of help desk calls, so it often gets stuck at priority number four or five and never really gets addressed. But nowadays, throwing in the environmental card may be just enough to take print management mainstream for many organizations. In short, print represents a perfect overlap of business requirements and environmental requirements–by better managing your print environment, you can pay less for print, while having a dramatic environmental impact.

One print-management credo that Compugen appears to be the only firm espousing is "print less".

Put simply, we believe that the least expensive and most environmentally friendly page is the one that never gets printed at all! To this end, a key goal of our Enterprise Imaging group is to help customers print less. With today's high levels of computerization, however, why aren't print volumes already going down? Let me share what I call my "itty bitty rules for why people print":

1. Legality—businesses still generally require signed paper contracts–it will take more time before the courts are no longer loath to accept electronic signatures on documents. As a result, law offices, for example, are big printers;

2. Reality—it is a well-known human condition that people need to be able to see and touch something before they fully accept that it is real and safe–"this is really important, so I'd better print it and keep a copy". It's referred to as the Haptic Response;

3. Practicality—when it comes to versatility, you simply can't beat a piece of paper–you can fold it, you can stuff it into your pocket, you can read it anywhere, it takes no time to boot up, you can drop it without it breaking and the batteries never run low!

While these rules may not be causing print volumes to go up, they are certainly helping to keep them at their status quo. My next post will offer thoughts on why print volumes are actually going up and explore alternatives that reduce or avoid the need for hardcopy printing altogether.

Print - Overlooked piece of the security puzzle whitepaper - DRAFT

Seeking feedback on this draft whitepaper. Comments and critiques are appreciated.

Print - Overlooked piece of the security puzzle whitepaper - DRAFT

View more documents from Gerry Skipwith.

Most organizations simply have no idea how much they print and how much it's costing them!

I'm about six months of Sundays away from completing the manuscript for a book I'm writing on print management that carries the working title of "EcoWise Printing: Gaining the Full Value of Printing in a Responsible Manner".

In the meantime, I thought I would take this opportunity, and perhaps a few others to follow, to share some thoughts related to the primary goal of my effort, which is to create awareness about the costs of printing–both financial and environmental–and offer some prescriptive guidance on how to reduce both.

Although I'm seeing signs of a growing awareness of the print cost problem, most organizations simply don't know how much they print or what their print-related costs all add up to.

In addition, the management of print is still typically decentralized in many firms, thus adding further to the print volume and cost measurement challenge; and even those who have it centralized often have difficulty keeping it that way because the start-up cost is so low for printing. Printers are now so cheap that a department manager or an end user can simply go to the nearest office supplies store to buy one, and the cost may go unrecorded because it's just one of many items consolidated on someone's expense reimbursement submission. Thus the cost may never seen by those interested in profiling the entire print environment.

However, it's not the start-up cost that gets you–it only represents about 5% to 10% of what you ultimately end up paying in total when you factor in the ongoing cost of consumables such as toner cartridges and paper. This is where the real cost and environmental impact stems from, but these items, too, can be bought by individual users at retail, and the costs also go unrecorded.

As a result of these and other factors, an IT manager may know about his/her capital budget for printers and the cost of whatever maintenance contracts are in place, but not be aware of how much is being spent on personal printers and on supplies and thus not know the true total cost of print for his/her organization.

In my next posting, I'll comment on why people print and why print volumes are going up rather than down–so much for the 'paperless office'!

do tree farms make a difference?

If you’re like most people, you believe that the planting of new trees helps offset losses due to logging. In some ways it does. There are now farms, called mono-culture tree plantations, that grow trees specifically for paper production, but unfortunately these farms are not a perfect solution.

First of all, they don’t contain the same biodiversity and range of habitats that natural forests do. As well, many of them have been established in places that used to be natural forests. In southeastern USA 75% of them occur on the site of former natural forests and wetlands.

In fact, these tree farms are the leading cause of lost wetlands in that area. By replacing natural forest and wetlands with tree farms, we greatly impact the natural ecosystem. The loss of forest as habitat leads to species endangerment. The indigenous variety of plants and animals has been disturbed and modified. The water and soil quality are both lower.

Can the soil fully replenish without the enormous variety of rotting plants, wildlife droppings and munching organisms? If not, it won’t be long before that land can’t sustain the growth of those “paper” trees any longer.

Paper will always have an important place in society: let's be sure to use it responsibly - Remember to EcoPrint!

Remember to ecoprint

Next time you are wondering if you should really print that document, remember this:

The United States prints 2 trillion pages of office copy annually. If we lay the paper out length-wise, this equates to;
•727 return trips to moon
•5 return trips to Mars
•4.6‘ thick wall of paper around the circumference of the earth

If we consider the world’s copy print of 9 trillion pages – we have;
•3271 return trips to moon
•23 return trips to Mars
•21‘ thick wall of paper around the circumference of the earth

How much resource can be consumed by paper?

In the USA, 4.6 million tonnes of paper consumed annually for office copy. Consider that making, using and disposing of that amount of paper:
• required enough wood to build more than 1 million average homes,
• used the same amount of water as flows over Niagara Falls in one full day,
• required more energy than is used in all the households in Los Angeles for a full year, and
• generated more than 5 million tonnes of solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
The point of this is not to say that copying and printing are terrible, shameful things we must never do. The goal is to drive home the fact that reducing your printing means both financial benefits to your company as well as environmental benefits for everyone.