04-16-2013
Green April: Contemplating a Paperless Architectural Office
Immediately following the April 1st announcement of PAPERCUT as the 2013 FXFOWLE Green April initiative, all paper in the office collected for recycling has been sorted by size and stacked on a daily basis in our 11th floor reception lobby. The act of temporarily diverting our paper recycling while providing a visual display of the magnitude of paper used on an office-wide basis provokes us to question the efficiency of our paper use. On the one hand, clearly evident in the large format paper stack are progress prints of various types of architectural drawing sheets, a deliverable required on most of our projects. On the other hand, the small format stack of 8.5 x 11 sheets consists largely of printed emails, often printed on only one side of the page. As we witness the growing piles on a daily basis, our collective reaction is to seek out ways to reduce our use of paper, and to determine whether our goal of becoming a paperless office is readily achievable.
In conjunction with physically displaying our used paper, FXFOWLE is also implementing paper use benchmarking. With both in-office and out-of-office copying and printing contracted to a single printing company, the data regarding total paper consumed by the office last year was, with some effort, both readily available and reasonably accurate. After converting the various paper sizes used into square feet, the total paper consumption for 2012 is 958,408 SF. The printing data also yielded the following basic information:
In-House Printing: 80%
Out-of-House Printing: 20%
Small Format Printing: 80%
Large Format Printing: 20%
Color Printing: 35%
Black & White Printing: 65%
Bond Paper: 95%
Trace Paper: 5%
At this point you might be asking yourself, "How do these numbers correspond to individual use?" The good news is that we have that information as well. If you consider only the small format printing, the yearly per employee paper use for 2012 is 7,266 SF. That's equal to each member of the staff printing just under 12,000 sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper over the course of a year. Or 46 sheets per person each work day! Equally interesting is the use of trace paper, which is consumed in individual rolls that are typically 12" wide and 50 yards long. The total trace paper use in 2012 is 43,200 SF or 288 rolls. On a per person basis, that's equal to 1 roll of trace lasting 4 1/2 months.
So where do we go from here? Whether you feel that the production of paper causes deforestation and is detrimental to the environment OR that paper production relies on an infinitely renewable resource and is a sustainable choice, everybody can agree that an efficient reduction in paper use is a win-win proposition. Behavioral research conducted by the Xerox Research Center found that office workers discard 45% of everything they print on most days, with the most popular "one-time use" examples being daily assignments, drafts of final documents, and emails. A common example is of someone bringing a document to a meeting and then recycling the document immediately following the meeting. Even if the same document is needed several days later, the Xerox research showed that people still recycle it, since the document is stored electronically and can be easily printed again. Such behavior suggests that the prediction of the paperless office, first reported in a 1975 article in Business Week magazine on the "Office of the Future", is still an elusive goal.
During the month of April here at FXFOWLE, we will be focusing our paper reduction efforts on printing only necessary documents (double sided whenever possible), using copy paper with recycled content, establishing collection bins for one-sided prints and then reusing them for notebook pads, and investigating the use of Clean Print software. Through these paper reduction efforts and future paper benchmarking reports, FXFOWLE will be able to monitor paper use in the office and keep paper reduction in the minds of those about to hit the print button.
In conjunction with physically displaying our used paper, FXFOWLE is also implementing paper use benchmarking. With both in-office and out-of-office copying and printing contracted to a single printing company, the data regarding total paper consumed by the office last year was, with some effort, both readily available and reasonably accurate. After converting the various paper sizes used into square feet, the total paper consumption for 2012 is 958,408 SF. The printing data also yielded the following basic information:
In-House Printing: 80%
Out-of-House Printing: 20%
Small Format Printing: 80%
Large Format Printing: 20%
Color Printing: 35%
Black & White Printing: 65%
Bond Paper: 95%
Trace Paper: 5%
At this point you might be asking yourself, "How do these numbers correspond to individual use?" The good news is that we have that information as well. If you consider only the small format printing, the yearly per employee paper use for 2012 is 7,266 SF. That's equal to each member of the staff printing just under 12,000 sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper over the course of a year. Or 46 sheets per person each work day! Equally interesting is the use of trace paper, which is consumed in individual rolls that are typically 12" wide and 50 yards long. The total trace paper use in 2012 is 43,200 SF or 288 rolls. On a per person basis, that's equal to 1 roll of trace lasting 4 1/2 months.
So where do we go from here? Whether you feel that the production of paper causes deforestation and is detrimental to the environment OR that paper production relies on an infinitely renewable resource and is a sustainable choice, everybody can agree that an efficient reduction in paper use is a win-win proposition. Behavioral research conducted by the Xerox Research Center found that office workers discard 45% of everything they print on most days, with the most popular "one-time use" examples being daily assignments, drafts of final documents, and emails. A common example is of someone bringing a document to a meeting and then recycling the document immediately following the meeting. Even if the same document is needed several days later, the Xerox research showed that people still recycle it, since the document is stored electronically and can be easily printed again. Such behavior suggests that the prediction of the paperless office, first reported in a 1975 article in Business Week magazine on the "Office of the Future", is still an elusive goal.
During the month of April here at FXFOWLE, we will be focusing our paper reduction efforts on printing only necessary documents (double sided whenever possible), using copy paper with recycled content, establishing collection bins for one-sided prints and then reusing them for notebook pads, and investigating the use of Clean Print software. Through these paper reduction efforts and future paper benchmarking reports, FXFOWLE will be able to monitor paper use in the office and keep paper reduction in the minds of those about to hit the print button.