A Paperless Business: Going Digital in the Office

The age of digital information was supposed to make paper documents a thing of the past, but 30 years later, businesses have yet to drop hard copies in favour of soft or digital copies.

 Paper in the office could remain in bins and filing cabinets for a long time, but a lot of other used paper, as well as cardboard, usually end up in landfills after they have served their purpose. This further contributes to the amount of waste that humans produce in ever-increasing levels, bringing harm to the environment.

 To play their part in environmental conservation, businesses are advised to practise cardboard and paper recycling, which can be made significantly easier with the help of a waste management company.

 Being able to recycle paper waste does not mean that we should give up on the goal of going paperless, or at least reducing the use of paper to the bare minimum. We should actually be aiming to never replicate 2016, when it was reported that the world collectively produced about 411 million metric tons of paper and cardboard, a lot of them ending up as waste after use.

 Here are a few things that business owners and office managers can try to reduce paper waste in the workplace.

 Count the paper

Do a review of how much paper the company uses and how much it spends on paper and paper-related tasks. You can utilise an online paper calculator to give you a clear idea of the environmental impact of the paper you use, and then start formulating where you can trim your paper needs down.

 Scan and reuse

If your company has been operating for quite some time now, you have most likely accumulated a lot of paper documents inside filing cabinets. Start scanning them either manually or through a professional scanning service to make digital copies of them. Just make sure to keep confidential files safe. Once they are scanned, you can reuse them for your printing purposes, giving them a new lease on life and keeping your need to buy new reams at a minimum.

Use apps

Utilising apps and taking advantage of their functionalities should be a given for businesses by now. You can have your employees use their gadgets for making to-do lists (instead of writing them down on paper or sticky notes), scanning documents to make a backup copy so that the original can be shredded and recycled, digitally signing soft copies of documents so that they need not be printed, and syncing and sharing documents. All that employees need to do is download the specific apps for their office needs from either Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store and install them in their gadgets.

Reducing our need for paper and cardboard in the office and elsewhere should have been done a long time ago. Fortunately, it’s not too late to start, alongside the initiative of having a better waste management system. We can help you do so with our paper waste disposal and recycling services. Call us today.