2020 & THE ENVIRONMENT: it's time to act, but how? Article 4 of 10
At Advanced UK, we're demonstrating our commitment to the environment, and we're helping our clients take positive steps to implement positive and effective change. It's time to act!
In this blog series, our own environmental evangelist, Humperdinck Jackman, explores a range of technologies and services which Advanced UK has launched to contribute to a better future for us all.
Let's Create Green Offices!
Environmental sustainability begins at home, and our commitment to sustainability at Advanced UK includes helping you find ways to work smarter and, faster, more profitably, while protecting the environment.
Our own working practises reflect this commitment, and this article might give you a few practical steps you could implement easily.
Ten Basic Steps to a Green Office
1. Set defaults to make environmental protection automatic
Adjust your print driver default settings to duplex, which automatically will print on both sides of the sheet. Deselect the cover sheet and you’ll avoid printing a sheet unnecessarily.
If you want others to know it’s your print, select the watermark option and you can place your initials or some other identifier on the sheet in a conspicuous fashion. Set draft modes and toner-saving modes for prints that don’t require high-quality output.
You will probably miss some opportunities, so Download the Xerox guide to responsible printing here
2. Select energy-efficient printers and multifunction devices
Your printer fleet should be EPA ENERGY STAR® and EPEAT certified - just look for the labels!
3. Force better print habits
Print on both sides of the page, which is called "duplexing." Print multiple images per page and print only the quantity you need at the time you need it. Print on paper certified to sustainable forestry standards or use paper with recycled content.
4. Choose innovative printing technologies
Consider Xerox-proprietary Emulsion Aggregation (EA) Toner. EA Toner offers sharp image quality, great reliability and low total cost of ownership because it reduces the amount of toner needed for printing a page and requires lower fuser temperature. That means reduced electricity consumption and CO2 emissions compared to conventional toner.
5. Choose your paper wisely!
Ensure you are recycling office paper, and print on recycled papers or FSC certified paper. Avoid printing on paper heavier than is required for the purpose: nobody appreciates 100 gsm paper when it comes to tearing it up or shredding it. Heavy paper is more expensive to post, too!
6. Engage your employees in fun ways.
With the Xerox Print Awareness Tool, you can engage your employees, since this tool raises employees’ awareness about the impacts of their printing decisions, and communicates office “news” using the customisable posting feature.
7. Use scanning to enable digital workflows
By turning manual, paper-based processes into efficient, digital ones, you’ll save paper, time and money and reduce the number of errors.
8. Send used toner cartridges back to Xerox
Never put used toner cartridges or waste toner containers in the regular waste. Instead, use the Xerox Green World Alliance recycling program, which prevents millions of supply items from entering landfills each year. You can even consolidate returns of five to 30 used supply items in a single box and ship them to us.
9. Implement secure printing
It's easy to hold print jobs at the device until a user enters a PIN to claim them. A time-out feature deletes unclaimed jobs. This prevents forgotten prints from piling up at the device and saves wasted print from accumulating!
10. Plan to meet with your clients via video link
Countless millions of miles are driven every year by company representatives driving to client offices. Just ask your staff if this is really productive? Video conferencing technology has progressed by leaps and bounds even in the last two years, and in the 2020's, expect to see increased acceptance of the remote meeting.
Advanced-UK is here to support you
At Advanced-UK, we have the pan-European experience to deliver and support the most sophisticated MFP fleets, and we'd be pleased to to help you explore these latest innovations.
Call us on 01895 811811
There's more in our Artificial Intelligence series - have you read:
Humperdinck Jackman
Director of Consulting Services
Humperdinck has a 30-year career spanning Document Management Systems (DMS), data protection, Artificial Intelligence, Data Protection and Robotic Process Automation. With many articles published in print internationally, he believes the advances in office technology are such that we're entering the 4th Industrial Revolution. Now Director of Marketing and Consulting Services at Advanced UK, he's as active with clients as he is in endeavouring to write original blog articles.
