How Can Printing Be More Eco-Friendly?

 

In these days of ‘paperless offices’ and remote working, some might imagine that doing everything electronically is not only more convenient, but also the greener option, with no printer to power up or trees cut down to make paper. 

 

However, that may not be so at all on any of these counts, which is why you can still invest in office printers and remain eco-friendly. 

 

Firstly, consider the paper question. Nowadays a lot of paper and other wood-based products come from sustainable forests, with kitemarks such as that of the Forest Stewardship Council, so it’s not as if you are laying waste to woodland to fill your printer tray. 

 

Furthermore, paper is one of the easiest things to recycle. A sheet of printer paper could be recycled up to seven times. This is much better than the situation with plastic; although there are types of plastic that can be recycled up to ten times, most can only go through the process once. 

 

A plastic item you will use is the printer ink cartridge, but you can use a recycled one for a low to medium-quality print job, and the cartridge can still go into recycling instead of being dumped in the ‘non-recyclable’ bin to go to landfill. 

 

Also, an energy-saving printer can limit the amount of electricity you use in the process. It is hardly as if electronic storage does not take up energy (data centres can use lots, not least to keep them cool with air conditioning) and, of course, you have to switch on electrical appliances to view any data stored online. 

 

So, far from storing everything online or in PDF files being the obviously greener option, it is frequently nothing of the sort, while there are plenty of ways of using a printer in a green, energy-efficient way.