Yesterday I mentioned I would write about printing and copying. Reducing the amount of printing and copying is a substantial part of green impact.
In addition to being EFM’s green impact champion I’m also the departments print champion. I’d like to point out that these are the only things I’ve ever been a champion of! Yes sad I know.
Tomorrow I will be attending a print champions meeting to discuss the implementation of MSP (My Sustainable Printing) for the entire University. Some departments are just embarking on the task of removing individual desktop printers and replacing with shared network printers.
luckily in EFM we carried out this task a few years ago to prepare for our move to the arts tower. Persuading people to part with their printers “for the greater good” was far from painless! I used various methods including bribery (we’re back to the biscuits again), bursting in to offices like the Spanish Inquisition (come on its classic Monty Python) and of course physical wrestling (only joking).
I also had various conversations along the lines of “you don’t actually expect me to walk the 7 paces from my desk to THAT printer over there do you?”
“Errmm yes” was the most tactful reply I could come up with. Anyone who knows me can vouch for my sympathetic nature!
Of course people in EFM are now used to using shared devices. All printers are set to print double sided by default, all users have to release print jobs on the device which ensures that any print jobs sent to the printer don’t print out and sit in the output tray if not needed and 2 shared printers have replaced approximately 80 desktop printers. In addition we purchased iPads for staff that regularly attend meetings and encouraged them not to print meeting documents. This has resulted in massive reductions in paper usage, toner costs and energy costs enabling us to achieve our green impact targets. Unfortunately our carpets wear out quicker as people trudge to the printers but this is a small price to pay (joking again!).
Today individual printers are just a dim distant memory for most EFM staff much like video recorders, film cameras and “proper” mars bars!
Anyway I wouldn’t have wanted to participate in the Arts Tower blackout if we’d had all those printers to turn off……