Sustainability is more than just a buzzword. It provides benefits to both your company and the environment. Printing and copying are a part of the daily operations of most businesses, but they can also create a lot of waste. Your printer can send many things to the trash between the paper and the empty cartridges. Reducing your printing and making a few other adaptations to how you print can make your daily printing more sustainable. If you’re looking to buy a copier in Fairbanks, AK, here are some things to know before you hook it up and start printing.
Check Printer Efficiency
First, before you purchase a new printer, make sure you’re examining the printer’s efficiency. This can include energy efficiency as well as how efficiently it uses ink. By carefully choosing your printer early on, you’ll set yourself up for more efficient printing. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore the tips that follow; it simply means that you’ll already be more efficient than other offices.
Ask If It’s Necessary
Set a clear expectation in your office to carefully consider the necessity of any document before you print it. Will this paper be essential to your operations, or will it be tossed into a filing cabinet, never to see the light of day again? Do you need to print the entire document, or is it sufficient to print the signature page? Unnecessary printing is a major source of printer waste in offices, so thinking before you print can go a long way towards reducing that waste and saving you money in printing costs.
Encourage Paperless Practices
While it’s nearly impossible to go completely without paper in today’s offices, it’s still a good idea to encourage paperless practices among your employees and clients. For example, if you have to send a contract to a new client, send it via email and provide instructions on how to e-sign the document. Ask them to sign and submit it digitally rather than printing it out to sign it. You can also encourage your employees to manage files digitally instead of keeping paper files for the accounts they manage.
Change Your Print Margins
Have you ever checked your documents’ print margins before you print? Many word processing programs come with margins preset to as much as an inch on all sides. You can reduce these significantly and still print professional-looking documents. This allows you to fit more text onto a single page, reducing your paper consumption significantly.
Print on Both Sides
One way to instantly cut your paper consumption in half is to start printing on both sides of the paper instead of on a single side. This can typically be done in the settings on your printer. You can also enable double-sided copying for your documents to make your printing and copying processes more efficient.
Print Black and White
While most offices primarily print text documents that are already black and white, it’s essential to consider printing in black and white for other purposes as well. Some professional documents, especially client-facing ones, may need to be printed in color. However, if you’re printing a document with images or graphs for internal purposes only, you should ask yourself if black and white will serve just as well. Color cartridges cost a lot more than black, so avoiding color printing whenever possible can save you significantly.
Use Slimmer Fonts
What font are you currently printing in? Have you ever thought about how much ink the individual letters of that font used? Certain fonts have heavier lines and added serifs that increase the ink required to print. If you want to reduce your ink consumption as much as possible, opt for a slimmer font. Believe it or not, a slimmer font can save you as much as 77% of your office printing costs. Calibri and Cambria are both ink- and toner-efficient options.
Look into Cartridge Refills
Ink and toner cartridges often get thrown away when they’re empty, and new ones are put into the printer in their place. Rather than tossing those cartridges and sending them to the landfill, consider getting refillable cartridges instead. When they’re empty, your service provider can come and refill your cartridges so those empty plastic boxes don’t end up in the dump.
If refillable options aren’t available to you for some reason, many ink companies can recycle cartridges for you. All you need to do is mail in your used cartridges, and they’ll take care of the rest.
Properly Maintain Your Printer
Proper printer maintenance can help your printer to print and copy more efficiently. You should ensure that your print rollers are in good shape so that paper doesn’t get caught, torn, or wasted. You should also make sure that your ink cartridges are clean and well maintained so that they don’t become clogged; if your cartridges become clogged, they won’t be able to print, and you likely will have to throw them out, regardless of how much ink is left in them.
Recycle and Reuse
While recycling won’t save you on your print costs, it can make your overall printing practices more sustainable and better for the environment. In addition to the option of recycling your cartridges, you should also recycle any printed documents you no longer need. It might sound simple, but paper is one of the most common materials sent to dumps in the country, and recycling your office’s papers can go a long way toward cutting down on that waste.
Find the Right Printer
If you’re looking to print more efficiently in your office, the first step is finding the best office printer/copier in Fairbanks, AK. Contact Arctic Office Products today or stop by our showroom to see some of our products. We’ll help you find an efficient printer that meets your company’s needs.