Stop wasteful printing, says Envirowise

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Added by The Editor, 3 months ago.

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UK businesses are printing around 120 billion pages unnecessarily each year and could save millions of pounds by enforcing stricter controls.

That's the latest finding from sustainable business consultancy Envirowise, where researchers have estimated that the real cost of printing waste could be five to 10 times the amount spent on disposing of it.

"Unnecessary printing of emails, multiple copies, single-sided printing and sending massive documents to the printer that are unlikely to be read, are just some of the regular scenarios lived out by businesses every day as a result of ‘accidental printing'," said Mary Leonard, a director at Envirowise.

In fact, she added, of the 12.5 million tonnes of paper and board used by UK businesses each year, around 4.7 million tonnes end up in the UK's waste stream.

Businesses could reduce waste costs by about 20% through actions such as using double-sided or multiple-page printing and recycling instead of paying for disposal. Envirowise has produced a ‘Green Officiency Toolkit' to help businesses reduce the amount of paper wasted. This is available at: http://www.envirowise.gov.uk/greenofficiency