As businesses reopen their offices, many, both large and small, are searching for ways to make their spaces more sustainable. Plus, there's increased pressure to reduce carbon footprints. This push for sustainability represents a significant transitional challenge. Learn why Managed Print Services are such an effective tool for reducing a business's carbon footprint and how they impact your sustainability.
Environmentally Conscious Consumers: Why It’s Important for Businesses to Reduce Carbon Footprints
In a recent study, 9 in 10 business leaders said consumers would hold them accountable for the environmental impact they make through their business. Big tech companies like HP report their own sustainability efforts to keep their customers in the know.
Consumers seek out environmentally conscious businesses. Their interest in the health of the environment has been putting pressure on companies to go green. These customers are making a brand’s environmental track record as a determining factor of whether they will buy from them or not. With more pressure to reduce carbon footprints mounting every day, it’s in every business's best interest to go green.
Carbon Footprint Basics
What is a Carbon Footprint?
According to a quick Google search, a carbon footprint is “the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other carbon compounds emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels by a particular person, group, etc.” When you drive a non-electric car, heat your home with oil or gas, the food your purchase and consume, and even your electricity use all factor in your CO₂ emissions. That usage is expressed as tons of CO₂ emitted per year. You can do this calculation for individuals, groups, events, or organizations.
Why Does Your Carbon Footprint Matter?
Understanding how your business generates greenhouse gases and how to reduce those emissions will help you develop more economical, socially responsible, and cost-saving processes. From a larger perspective, more businesses are looking to their carbon footprint to cut out waste in their operations, introduce new technologies, reduce the negative impact on the environment, and grow their sustainability efforts.
Try our Green Calculator today to find out your impact and use our 3-step process to save money, time, and resources on printing – and take a step toward going green!
How Managed Print Services Can Help Businesses Go Green
Businesses looking to become more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint must know where to look to make improvements. In companies of any size, printers and copiers generate some of the highest outputs of carbon. They contribute to the carbon footprint in the form of toner and cartridges. Here’s how managed print services can reduce that large carbon footprint.
Managed Print Services and Recycling Toner Cartridges
One of the most tangible ways managed print services can reduce a business’s carbon footprint is by partnering with a Managed Services company with a toner cartridge recycling program. When thrown in the trash, toner cartridges live for over 400 years in a landfill. This means that if William Shakespeare had a toner cartridge to throw away during his life, it would still be in a landfill to this day!
By participating in toner recycling, companies reduce their environmental impact substantially. Sophisticated toner recycling programs provide recycling bins for all empty cartridges, and the cartridges are picked up by the managed print services provider when full. Once the cartridges are picked up, they are recycled in a closed-loop recycling process. This process is multi-phased, and the materials are separated and refined for use in new ink and toner cartridges.
Businesses that recycle cartridges can make a difference that will resonate with environmentally-conscious customers.
Saving Paper
The amount of paper used in office printers every single day is astounding. Each year, over 10,000 sheets of paper are used by the average office worker - and 45% of those sheets end up in the trash. Savvy business leaders look for ways to cut back on paper usage without compromising work quality or productivity.
While using remanufactured toner cartridges will help cut down on carbon emissions, so will reducing the use of paper. MPS will help you reduce the amount of paper used in your office. With policies like pull printing and setting up the driver to print duplex as the standard, you can effectively reduce your paper use in two steps. Small changes like this will save not only your money, they also help the environment.
Managed print services also help companies save paper by practical applications of active monitoring, which allows your MPS partner to make recommendations on paper usage. Users or departments abusing printing privileges by printing large quantities of unnecessary documents or using printers for personal use are identified and subsequently managed.
Benefits of Pull Printing
Pull printing has many names: follow printing, push printing, tap, and print. However, they all refer to the same printing method. Pull printing allows your employees to print a document to the nearest printer. The document only prints once the employee swipes their printer badge, releases the print via an app on their phone, or enters their PIN. Using this unique feature by managed print services, the thousands of pages printed in error or never leave the printer tray are deleted automatically with pull printing.
Other benefits of pull printing include:
• Safe printing, anywhere, anytime
• Print to your printer of choice
• Documents won't get lost
• Mobility
How MPS Can Reduce Energy Consumption by Increasing Efficiency
Managed print services can significantly reduce energy consumption for any business. Many companies use outdated, aging printers, which require more energy than newer, more efficient models.
Businesses can not - and should not - afford these clunky liabilities. An aging printer fleet drives up the electric bill, creates additional costs in terms of operational efficiency. Odds are, if the printer is old enough to use excessive amounts of electricity, it's old enough to experience performance problems.
By upgrading the printing fleet and consolidating to fewer, more energy-efficient printers, businesses can make a difference in the environment and their electric bill.
Achieve Sustainability with ImageNet’s Managed Print Services
ImageNet's award-winning Managed Print Services are backed by 60 years of experience helping businesses like yours. We’ve developed our MPS to reduce your overhead costs and help you create a sustainable office space with less paper use and print supply waste simultaneously.
Unsure if your print environment is costing you efficiency and overhead? Get an assessment of your entire print environment, from printer and users to your print network. Get a sustainability upgrade today with MPS!