The Benefits of No Paper: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

Global warming is an issue that affects us all, individuals and businesses alike. The temperature of the earth’s atmosphere and its oceans is rising. This is bringing about serious changes on our planet. Thankfully, awareness of global warming is also rising and people are beginning to realise how important it is to reduce our carbon footprint.Businesses have a corporate and social responsibility to show that they care for their community, their employees and their environment. Customers expect complete transparency as far as your environmental policy is concerned.You need to have effective carbon management strategies in place in order to reduce your environmental impact by reducing your carbon footprint.This is not just an altruistic way of working – by ensuring you are taking full corporate responsibility in this way you will increase your potential customers. The government is committed to bringing carbon emissions down year on year until at least 2050. Now is the time to look at ways in which you can cooperate with this program.

Paper and Your Carbon Footprint

Do you use a lot of paper in your business? Do you have stacks of documents in cabinets and cupboards? Do you photocopy documents and print and reprint in order to share information with employees? How many printers do you have that are in use?If you use a lot of paper in your business you’re creating a large and unnecessary waste stream. Not only in terms of your carbon footprint, but also in terms of time management, organisation and productivity.The Environmental Defence Fund has created a paper calculator which you can find on their website. It will help you to understand the environmental impact your business has by continuing to use paper.

How to Reduce Paper Use in Your Business – Less Is More

There is a simple solution that will drastically reduce the amount of paper you use in your office. In turn, this will reduce your storage and haulage costs in the long term. You can therefore increase revenue and make more efficient use of your resources. This solution is to improve your business technology.Make a commitment to move away from paper-based working systems. Head towards having a central, digitised framework for your business. Update your business technology. Data handling and storage is no longer something to be utilised by the elite or online-only business community. It’s the smart move for businesses today and there are a host of benefits to doing this.

Reduced Need To Print and Scan Documents

Having important corporate documents on a centralised server that everyone can access means you will not have to print them over and over again. Consider an employee manual, the fire safety policy, or the company history document. These things are often printed and distributed for each new set of employees, and sometimes again for referral, or because they are under review.With one master digital copy, stored safely and securely in the cloud, anyone can refer to these documents at any time. If they need to be reviewed or re-written, that doesn’t immediately render however many hundreds of previous copies obsolete and good for nothing but the shredder.

Other Benefits

There are companies offering a host of paper-free solutions to modern business problems. There are secure email services for sending classified or sensitive documents. There are new standards being set in secure data storage every few years.Even if you still must have paper copies of certain documents, having a secure digital version stored off-site at a secure location is a great way to ensure speedy recovery from floods or fires that might otherwise bring your business to a standstill.

Conclusion

Governments around the world are now setting targets for reducing their carbon footprint. Even small businesses will soon be expected to comply with carbon reduction legislation. Added to this, more and more consumers are actively choosing companies and service providers based on their environmental policy and commitments to carbon reduction.For more information on how cloud-based technology can have you address your carbon footprint, get in touch with Tricostar today by calling +44 (0)208 292 2660 or contact us online.