How Saving the Environment Can Also Save You Money

Does going green mean higher costs for your small business? Not any more. When you implement more sustainable business practices, you’ll see why being good to the environment is also good for the bottom line.

1. Buy in bulk. Buying your groceries in bulk saves on the per-unit cost and reduces waste by using less packaging. Keep the same principle in mind when you buy supplies like toner or recycled paper. Look for the words "high-efficiency" or "high-capacity" to denote bulk-sized items that lower your per-print or per-unit cost.
2. Return toner bottles and cartridges for recycling. The recycling programs offered by many companies and manufacturers has kept millions of used supplies out of landfills. A lot of them will offer pre-paid shipping labels for sending back your used supplies.
3. Replace stand-alone devices with MFDs (Multi-Function Devices). Instead of buying several individual fax machines or printers, for example, buy one product that can print, copy, scan and fax. You’ll save money by purchasing supplies for only one device instead of several. Plus, you'll cut energy use you would have used to power separate devices.
4. Choose energy-saving products. Save money on energy bills by choosing ENERGY STAR compliant devices (printers and multifunction printers, for example). Make sure ENERGY STAR is enabled before you start using the equipment. Some products can learn your company's usage patterns and automatically adjust between power saving and ready modes to help conserve energy.
5. Look for environmentally responsible print technologies. Scientific breakthroughs like the Emulsion Aggregate (EA) Toner and Solid Ink from Xerox allow you to print more while creating less waste. EA Toner, delivers sharper, more uniform image quality, longer fuser life, better reliability and lower total cost of ownership over the life of a machine. Solid Ink products use cartridge-free blocks of ink instead of toner. Solid Ink is easy to use, cost-effective and produces up to 90% less waste than comparable color laser printers.
6. Save on shipping. Solid Ink sticks are significantly smaller than toner cartridges, so they are less expensive to ship and require less storage space.
    
7. Think before you print. Use the Print Preview feature to avoid printing unwanted pages. Better yet, use GreenPrint™ software that automatically finds pages with typical waste characteristics, such as pages with just a URL, banner ad, logo or legal jargon, and asks if you want to print them.
8. Duplex print and copy. Using both sides of a page is the best way to reduce paper use. Double-sided printing is available on most printers, as is a document feeder that can scan both sides of a page at once for fast double-sided copying.
    
9. Adjust print driver default settings. Customize your print drivers to become more eco- and budget-friendly. Choose duplex printing as your "default" mode and adjust settings for specific applications, such as always printing emails in black-and-white. Print drivers from manufacturers likeXerox and HP offer the unique ability to customize print settings for each application, allowing you to automatically apply these custom settings each time you print.
    
10. Use recycled paper and recycle used paper. The paper industry’s goal is to reach 60% paper recovery by 2012, according to the Paper Industry Association Council. Recycling paper fiber saves trees, energy, water and chemicals. Keep a recycling box at each desk to make it easy to collect used paper. And choose environmentally preferable papers such as recycled content papers, papers certified to sustainable forest management standards (FSC or SFI) or innovative papers like High-Yield Business Paper, which is produced using half the number of trees as conventional paper.
11. Use scanning to enable digital work-flows. Multifunction printers can be your on-ramp for turning paper files into electronic ones. Scanning documents makes them easy to archive, share, email and retrieve. This saves time spent searching for information, and saves money by reducing paper document warehousing or storage costs.
12. Implement secure printing which holds jobs at the device until a user enters a PIN to claim them. A time-out feature deletes unclaimed jobs, preventing stacks of forgotten prints from piling up at the device. Secure Print also prevents unauthorized viewing of sensitive documents—a necessity in many legal, health care and financial organizations. .
13. Distribute documents electronically instead of in hard copy when feasible.
14. Look for pre-owned or refurbished equipment, which is re-manufactured to meet original factory specifications, tested and quality-checked by the manufacturer's technicians, and comes with a warranty. Our refurbishment program prevents millions of pounds of material from entering landfills each year.
     
15. Take advantage of trade-in offers for products offered by most manufacturers especially for heavy use items like UPS Backup systems. Turn in your old device for cash toward a new printer or multifunction printer, power device etc. These manufacturers can dispose of your old device properly or re-manufacture the parts to reduce waste.

To learn more about Managed Services and Green IT, please contact Tech Prognosis at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or (512) 814-8044