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Posts Tagged ‘Recycling’

Eco KPIs – tracking ink and paper reduction initiatives with green metrics

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Green Bay saves money by going green with green fonts

An excellent example of going green and saving money is provided by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. In order to reduce campus printing costs, their Computing and Information Technology Department had the initiative to change their preferred font from the most commonly used one – Arial to the Century Gothic font.

The new font uses 30% less ink or toner. Taking into account that ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of the printed page, and it is also quite expensive – about $10,000 a gallon, with toner cartridges and drums not far behind – the savings are substantial (University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, 2010).

The IT department switched automatically the default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic, and strongly encouraged everyone in the campus to do the same for other software programs too, such as Word, Excel and Entourage for Macintosh.

Such initiatives to reduce ink and toner, can be complemented with initiatives that address paper consumption. Both types of initiatives – targeting the volume of paper and volume of ink used can have a big impact on lowering printing costs. More than reducing costs, a green attitude like this one will generate supplementary benefits for the people involved and gradually can make and impact on environment overall.

smartKPIs.com (2010) contains a variety of measures and eco KPI examples that can help keeping track of the impact of efficient paper use initiatives:

More resources on green fonts and ink reduction initiatives

The resources used and recommended by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay are:

References

University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, 2010, Going green with Century Gothic, available at http://www.uwgb.edu/compserv/topics/CenturyGothicGreen.htm (accessed 20 April 2010)

smartKPIs.com (2010), “KPI examples for Environmental Care”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/csr-sustainability-environment-care/environmental-care/ (accessed 20 April 2010)

Tags: Database of KPIs, Green fonts, Green initiatives, Library of KPIs, Paper reduction, Recycling, Sustainability, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
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Green metrics and Key Performance Indicator examples for reducing paper consumption

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Efficient Paper Use: Where the Environment and Business Intersect

Paper is an omnipresent element in any office, both indispensable for current activities and seen as a great burden when it starts to create piles of documents which need to be looked after.

According to the World Resources Institute the global paper and paperboard consumption per capita per year in 2005 in countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and United States of America exceeded 220 kilograms, and some even 300 kilograms.

Companies spend huge amounts of money on purchasing paper, but also with paper storing, labor in handling paper, postage, lost or obsolete documents and with printing and copying. In their efforts to improve their internal operations and reduce costs, many companies managed to save thousands or even millions of dollars through their paper reduction efforts, and also improve efficiency. Additionally, they also earned a reputation for being environmentally responsible.

In order to achieve efficient paper use, a company should follow the next steps:

smartKPIs.com contains a variety of measures and KPI examples which support campaigns of paper reduction and efficient paper use:

Using KPIs in projects of paper reduction and efficient paper use not only that are vital, but can make the difference between an initiative and a great success.

General Electric, through their Make Side initiative, managed to identify approximately $1.5 billion in potential cost-savings by 2001, and estimates an up to $10 billion cost reduction in the coming years through digitizing many of its processes.
Legacy Health Systems saved $279,000 in reduced paper consumption by centralizing files, reducing distribution lists, and consolidating forms.
Lockheed Martin estimates savings of eight million sheets of paper and $250,000 by putting a 100-page manual on the Internet.