According to the EPA, paper and cardboard is the largest category of municipal solid waste generated in the United States, with 67.4 million tons of paper and cardboard waste being generated in 2018 alone. While 43.1% of paper goods (excluding newspapers) were recycled in 2018, recycling alone isn’t enough. To truly protect our natural resources, especially our critical forests, we need to significantly reduce our collective paper usage.

Businesses play a significant role in reducing paper usage. Each year, American companies produce around 21 million tons of paper waste. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to reduce your business’ paper waste production, including many that can be implemented at no or little cost.

As a first step, businesses can discourage excessive paper usage through employee training and verbal reminders. Encourage team members to be mindful of what they print, such as only printing the specific pages/sections that they absolutely need. Print settings can also be helpful here – set your printers to default to double-sided printing or to smaller margins, which will enable you to print the same content on fewer pages.

There are a variety of digital tools which can help digitize your workflows. Consider swapping from physical contracts to an electronic signing software, such as DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign. Not only will this reduce your paper usage, but it can also save time and costs as compared to hard copies. Similarly, consider replacing analog fax machines with an online fax provider or eliminating faxes entirely in favor of digital submissions or emails.

The above tools can help you reduce the amount of paper coming into your office, but it’s also important to consider how you will manage your existing paper files. Depending on your business context, you may work to digitize your entire database or you may follow a hybrid approach. Regardless of whether or not you’re able to go entirely “paperless” at your office, there are a variety of useful strategies and recommendations available at the “Definition” and “Action” links below. We encourage you to review them and consider what you can do today to reduce your dependence on this expensive, generally non-renewable product.