It’s a common sight in many offices: wastebaskets filled to the brim with paper. Look next to any desk or printer, and you’re likely to find a stack of misprints, extra copies and other discarded paper waste.

So here are a few things to keep in mind before you send that next job to the printer – and a few tips to keep costs down when you do need to print.

Do you really want to print that?
You should always consider whether what you’re about to print really needs to be printed. For example, if you have to share a document with a number of people at a meeting, are there other ways to display it without printing out a copy for everyone? If it’s a large meeting, maybe use a projector to display the information, or just display it on a notebook screen at a smaller meeting. You could also save the document to a shared folder and provide everyone with a link, or send it as an email attachment.

Conservation: waste not, want not
If you’ve decided you absolutely must print a document, there are some ways to reduce the cost and environmental impact. If it’s just for casual use, you can print in ‘draft’ mode and reuse misprints by printing on the “clean” side of the page. Most important, when you print on both the front and back of each page, you reduce your paper use by up to 50 percent. You can make this easy by purchasing a printer  with a built-in duplexer, and setting the default settings in your driver to “print on both sides”.

Implement recycling efforts
Recycling can take place at multiple levels of your business. First, the obvious point: have a recycling bin, and make sure any discarded paper goes into it rather than the waste bin. Simple in theory, but it’s easy to forget, so make sure you have bins strategically placed around the office and particularly next to the printer/copier.

You can also recycle print cartridges and equipment. At Ganson, our recycling kit includes 3 unassembled cartridge collection boxes. Each box can hold 6 – 12 used laser copier or inkjet cartridges. We also include a shipping label for our Cartridge Recycling Center with a pre-paid ARS tag.

Our Cartridge Recycling Center  will take your toner cartridges and disassemble them into metal and plastic components. The metal components are melted and resold. The plastic components are shredded into tiny pieces. These pieces are then used as asphalt fillers on the highway.

Ganson cartridges minimize waste. Our compatible cartridges decrease the amount of plastic, steel, aluminum and rubber sent to landfills and burned in incinerators. None of the components from these empty toner cartridges end up in a landfill. We offer this service for $45 per recycling kit. For more information on Ganson recycling please contact us at: 1-800-434-9011

Use recycled paper
Try to use recycled paper, which is made from materials that would otherwise end up in our landfills. By incorporating this “waste” into the paper manufacturing process and eliminating the energy use and production costs associated with virgin pulp and whitening agents, everybody benefits.

Keep energy costs low
Paper and printing supplies aren’t the only thing you can conserve. You can save energy and money simply by turning off printing equipment when it isn’t in use. Plus, consider investing in energy-efficient equipment.
ENERGY STAR ® is a registered trademark of the US Environmental Protection Agency.