Junk Mail: Get Yourself Off Mailing Lists

Junk mail isn’t just a menace at home, it’s making its way into offices too. Not only is junk mail annoying and time consuming to go through, it needlessly uses significant amounts natural resources. Every year U.S. junk mail uses paper from over 100 million trees, fills over 420,000 garbage trucks and produces 51 million tons of greenhouse gases. There are few ways that you can get off mailing lists to reduce the paper overflow.

1. Contact the company directly and ask to be removed from their list. You can go to the ‘contact us’ page on most websites to get a direct email address.
2. Contact Direct Marketing Association and request your name and organization be removed from their lists.
3. New American Dream has partnered with an organization called 41pounds.org which says it can completely remove up to 95% of the junk mail you receive for a one-time fee of $41.

A Simple Switch to Recycled Paper offers Significant Environmental Savings

A simple switch from regular paper to recycled paper can be a big savings for the environment.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, a ton of recycled paper saves over 7000 gallons of water, 17-31 trees, 4,000 KWh of electricity, 60 pounds of air pollutants.

With the average office worker using over 10,000 sheets of paper per year or 700 pounds, this adds up to a lot of water, trees, electricity and pollution saved.

Although regular paper is cheaper than recycled paper, it is not by much. The average cost of a single paper ream is $5 whereas a recycled ream is averaging around $7.

For more information on the cost of managing paper, read my article, “The Cost of Managing Paper: A Great Incentive to go Paperless”, published by Inform IT.

Meeting Prep – Don’t Print that Document

A study by Xerox showed that 45% of the office paper that is discarded was on the day it was printed – which begs the question, how necessary was it to print the document in the first place?

Next time you go to a meeting, consider whether everyone really needs a full copy of all the documents. If it is just an aid to be used during the meeting and then discarded, don’t print it. Not only does this waste paper, but often people will end up reading, or skimming, the document rather than listen to you talk. However, your audience still needs to be informed, so here are some alternatives to printing a copy for each person.

• Print one or two master copies that can be passed around.
• Develop a 1 page executive summary that highlights the main points
• E-mail the information out beforehand so people can be familiar with the information
• Use an overhead projector or white board to write up the main points or topics
• Download to a e-reader such as a Kindle or iPad
  

Update Your Fax and Save Paper

E-mail and scanners have all but made the fax machine a thing of the past, but most offices can’t quite give them up yet. The good news is there are now Online Faxes that allow you all the convenience of a fax machine, but use less paper, and offer other benefits:

• Lower Cost
• More Efficient Use of Time
• More Reliable
• Environmentally Responsible
• Security

How it works:

Sending: When sending faxes, you log in to the fax website and upload the document. If the document is already a file on your hard drive, you simply upload it like an e-mail attachment. If you only have a hard copy, you’ll need to scan it, save it, then upload it. On the receiving end, the recipient will get a paper hard copy, just like you had sent it via traditional fax (unless they too have an online fax).

Receiving: When receiving incoming faxes, rather than a paper print out, you get an e-mail with an attachment. If you need to print it you can, otherwise you can just save it to the appropriate folder on your hard drive.

All those unwanted faxes, just hit delete – no need to save them to your desktop, waste paper. Need another reason? Most spam fax comes through whether you want it to or not, that means it gets printed, and you have to pay for the paper.

Becoming the Paperless Office – 4 part series by Inform IT

Inform IT has launched a 4 part series articles by myself, K.J. McCorry, to be released in the coming month on becoming the paperless office. This is preparation for my upcoming book, Becoming the Paperless Office.

Click here to view the  first article on The Cost of Managing Paper.

Click here to view the second article on Using Document Management Software to Improve Data Management and Reduce Paper.

Click here to view the third article on Organizing Documents Successfully on a Shared Drive Network.

Click here to view the fourth article on Becoming Paperless for Effectiveness and Efficiency

I will also be teaching an online webinar about paperless office through Ragan Management Resources on Wednesday, October 28th. click here to purchase the CD of the recording.