I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to cut down on paper use in my life. Back in the good old corporate days, I always had to print millions of documents to review with different teams. And I was famous (or infamous, depending on who you talk to) for shrinking down each page to 50% so I could fit two pages on each sheet of paper, and of course I’d also print on both sides of the sheet. One client in particular often complained that the type was too little for him to read, so I’d print a “special” copy for him that was at 100% but still printed on both sides. Once, I tried to pull off a review with no paper copies and just projected the document on a large screen… while this saved several trees, it required me to shut the lights and I heard several people snoring!

So in addition to shrinking pages and printing on both sides of each sheet, what else can we do around the office to reduce the amount of paper we use?

First, change your Word settings (in the normal.dot template).  Why Microsoft decided that we’d need an inch on the top and bottom and 1.25 inches on each side is completely beyond me, but it’s excessive. You can reduce your margins significantly with no impact to your documents. I set mine to be a quarter of an inch on each side and half an inch on the top and bottom to allow for a quarter in for headers and footers. You can also change the margins in Excel files too.

Second, I also always use font size 10 instead of 12 and up.

Third, unless your document is going somewhere or to someone really important, I find that Title pages are completely superfluous. Just include the information in header or footer instead.

Fourth, while we’re at it, a lot of networked printers are set to print out a cover sheet to distinguish the owner of the print job. Let’s get rid of that too. We’re smart enough to figure out which documents are ours. (And let’s face it, even with the cover sheet, we’ve all accidentally stolen other’s printout before!)

Fifth, (this one requires a little more effort and coordination) dedicate one network printer to draft copies and other non-important printouts. Since there were people that were against printing on both sides, they could drop off papers that still had a blank side into this printer and we would be able to use up the blank side before sending these papers off to their final destination to be recycled. This was also great because we could set the printer to economy mode and use up less toner too.

Sixth, in Powerpoint, print in Handout mode and include several slides per page. If you’ve got an effective presentation, then there should only be a few bullets per page, so it will still be readable when you shrink it down.

Lastly, think before you print. Do you really need hard copies of your emails and TPS reports? Probably not – so don’t print it! If you really must have a hard copy, then see if someone else has already printed it out. If not, then at least try to share your copy when you’re done to save someone else from printing it also.

Now take these ideas to your office manager and demand change! …And while you’re at it, ask for a raise too -- you deserve a reward for helping to cut costs and go green! :-)