Paperless office: changes that allow trees to blossom

Dutch businesses make an average of 74,7 million copies per day. Do you have any idea how many trees that is? An astonishing 9500! 8000 A4s can be gained from an average tree (10 meter long, 30 centimeter wide). Per year, worldwide almost 8,8 million hectors of natural forest disappear due to the production of paper, wood, soy and palm oil. Luckily some organizations are dedicated to the protection of forests. One initiative here in the Netherlands is the National Festival of Trees, or Dutch Arbor Day (Nationale Boomfeestdag), that will take place for the 60th time on March 16th.

March 16, 2016: Dutch National Festival of Trees

During the National Festival of Trees children plant on average 200,000 trees. Fabulous, right? After all, environmental consciousness begins with children. They will, after all, be responsible for our planet in the future. Until that time, however, we adults have a lot of work to do. The Dutch currently hold the rotating position of presidency of the council of the EU, so as part of the festival there will be a debate about the importance of forests in Europe. Afterwards, in the city of Den Bosch, the participating countries will sign an agreement to plant more trees, known as the Bossche Bossenverdrag (Forest Accord of Den Bosch).


Tips to reduce paper consumption

Planting trees is not the only way to support nature. We need to limit the number of trees that are cut down. Your organization can contribute to this by working digitally as much as possible. This can, for example, be done by using apps that make paper unnecessary like Evernote, Scanner Pro and Pocket. If it is still necessary to print, the following tips can help you save paper.


Tip 1
Think hard: do I really need to print this? Perhaps it is better to save it in your favorites or somewhere in your computer so that it is easily found with a search command. Or choose an environmentally friendly letter type. Font, spacing and layout determine how much information fits on a page. The more space that is available for text, the less paper is used.


Tip 2
Use paper that is as thin as possible. Why use 70-gram paper when lighter paper is also available? You can always print official documents on better-quality paper.


Tip 3
Print double-sided as much as possible. You can set this as standard on your printing settings. And while you are already in settings: set your printing for black and white: that saves enormous amounts of costly colored toner. Do you have waste paper? Use it for taking notes.


Tip 4
Avoid printing drafts and concept versions: review these instead on your computer. Want to avoid eyestrain? Try enlarging the letter type and/or change to an eye-friendly font like Trebuchet or Verdana.


Tip 5
Change the settings of your printer to ensure that it doesn’t print empty pages.


Tip 6
What is one of the biggest sources of paper waste in organizations? Meetings. Every document printed for meeting costs trees…and for what? There are other options. Considering paperless meetings? You can read more about them here.


Try the tree-saving test!

Want to help the fight against deforestation and allow the trees to blossom? Convince your colleagues with our tree-saving test and switch to a paperless office. With this tool you can quickly calculate how many trees you can save by avoiding paper in meetings. That way you address the greatest source of paper waste-- meetings--and cut costs at the same time! Clearly win-win!

Calculations for going paperless, try it now!

iBabs Meeting Assessment
iBabs is a leader in paperless meetings and enables you to reduce these piles of documents to the thickness of your tablet. Thousands of organizations have been using this system for more than 15 years.

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