How You Can Reduce Print Waste by Setting Print Policies

Individuals can often print multiple documents by mistake or even print the document and leave it uncollected, which not only produces waste, but also creates a security risk within an organisation. Waste is also caused by documents being printed in colour when mono printing would suffice, and printing multi-page documents printed instead of using double-sided settings.

Print waste can cause a business to have unnecessary costs and having this excess waste could lead to valuable storage space being taken up by redundant documents. Waste also has a negative impact on the current environmental issues, which could ultimately compromise the organisation's appearance on being ‘green’ and their CSR strategy. By making small changes to user behaviour, or implementing even the most basic print policies, it can make a significant impact.

So what is a print policy?

Print policies are essentially guidelines and rules for all office workers to abide by, set through a print management solution. These rules can be predetermined which gives an organisation full control over their printing and play a key part in reducing print waste. Print policies provide the opportunity to save money so that it can be better spent elsewhere in the business.

How will it benefit my organisation?

There are a variety of print policies which could be introduced such as not releasing jobs until it has been authenticated and if a document hasn’t been collected, this will be detected and automatically deleted off the system. This will eliminate any waste produced through the user making errors. A print policy can also ensure that documents are only printed in black and white and have a duplex setting. Again, the amount of paper used will be substantially reduced through introducing this policy.

For a lighter approach, warnings or prompts can appear on a users screen, suggesting alternative printing methods that will reduce print waste. This will encourage change in people’s attitudes within the business, which will lead towards a more sustainable environment. This reformed management and a combination of these policies will give organisations precise control over costs and usage. Using a print management system to track activity once these policies have been implemented will show where costs are being saved and where improvements can be made.

Your first steps to change…

After an analysis of the organisations current print fleet and output from our specialist print audit team, Apogee can determine which print policies are most suitable to support the efforts of taking back control and reducing your print waste. To find further details on how Apogee can help your organisation reduce waste, please complete the form below.