Paper Trail
Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Frank Romano
Paper that runs through printing presses is down in volume; some of it having shifted to production-level digital printers, but most of it converted into electronic form. About 9 trillion pages a year never leave computer screens; they are born electronically, live briefly as a set of zeros and ones, and then have their bits erased. But over in the office, the average American office worker uses a sheet of paper every 12 minutes — a ream per person every two and a half working weeks — 100-200 lbs. of paper disposed every year.
The introduction of e-mail resulted in a 40 percent increase in office paper consumption. The worldwide growth in desktop or departmental printers between 1988 and 1993 gave office workers access to printing. A trillion sheets of paper are printed on office printers all over the world, and then thrown away within a few hours. Predictions of the paperless office are now 33 years old, first made by Business Week in a 1975 article and promoted by Wang Labs (offices did not become paperless but they did become wangless). We are approaching the point when there will be a printer for every person on the planet.
The number of office printed pages is about 2.6 trillion worldwide. Xerox studies found that office workers throw away 45 percent of everything they print within a day. The most popular “single use” materials are reports, to-do lists, drafts and e-mails. Others include cover sheets, e-tickets for flights and travel directions. A cover page on a network printer job only survives about 30 seconds: You recognize your job and toss the cover sheet. You might take an e-mail printout to a meeting and then recycle it. Even if you want to use it a few days later, people print it again and recycle it because they don't want to have to go and look for that same printout. The computer is now our filing cabinet.
Tracking the cost
Office printing is out of control. Thirteen percent of office workers do not worry about how many documents they print as long as they recycle them, but only two-thirds of companies provide recycling bins for paper. This is compounded by the fact that there is a general lack of guidelines for employees around printing practices, and most people readily admit to not really thinking twice about hitting “print.” A lot of things get printed out mistakenly or are thrown away almost instantly. The publishing and legal industries are prime offenders. They should click on the trash bin icon instead of the print icon to speed up the process — a combination printer/shredder might be in our future.
We don't even use paper to buy paper. Purchase orders now are electronic, and the volume of print purchased online is growing. Many companies have no idea what they are spending on printing, because organizations don't look at it uniformly. It comes out of different budgets. An organization might have several different departments with extremely different printing needs, and the costs for those needs are buried within departmental budgets.
Companies can track outsourced printing by the invoices it receives from printing services, but all that paper and ink used internally is hidden in a million budget lines for office supplies, stationery or whatever. How does this affect print buyers? The volume of procured paper with printing on it is diminishing, and this is why print buyers usually are in design or production.
Paper volumes are flat. The growth of paper in the office does not compensate for the losses in printing papers. This is reflected in paper company mergers, as well as closings and changes in mills and paper machines. Whether paper is printed in-house or out, it still is paper and our use of paper is changing.
Contact Romano at fxrppr@rit.edu.
