Office regime: Print, recycle, repeat
Printing documents and tossing them out almost immediately is a common ritual in the workplace--one that's not so environmentally friendly. According to a recent study by Xerox, as much as 40 percent of what's printed in an office is thrown away or into the recycling bin on a daily basis. And if it's pitched to a blue bin, it still takes energy to recycle that paper.
Xerox, of course, has a technology solution to the problem. In recent months, the printing company came out with a "green" paper that promises to cut the environmental footprint of traditional paper-making methods. Xerox's paper, called Xerox high yield business paper, uses half as many trees as regular paper and requires less water, chemicals and fuel to produce. The printed matter is also 10 percent lighter than typical papers. It's designed for the high-volume printing like in newspaper publishing, but it's not for archiving. The pages will turn yellow over time.
Still, in an interview with Xerox CTO Sophie Vandebroek on Wednesday, it would seem that people need to get over their love of paper first. No shocker, Xerox found in its study that people like the touch and feel of freshly printed pulp.
than about tossing corn cobs. They are both the products of
renewable crops. Does the author think that ancient redwoods are
cut for making printer paper?
that one day we actually tilted some of the printers 45 degrees
and set a trash can under them - just to make a point. Each
page that was printed went straight into the trash.
At the end of the day only about 20% had been fished out or
"rescued" as they printed.
And we never recycle.