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Green Technology: Making the Paperless Resolution for 2013
The term ‘paperless office’ has been around since the late 1970’s and the introduction of personal computers. Office automation and electronic documents have the potential to significantly reduce the amount of paper documents. But rather than reduce the amount of paper used, advancements in computer and printing technology actually accelerated dramatically the use of paper.
From 1980 to 2000 the amount of paper used in offices doubled. It wasn’t until 2000 that the use of paper in the office began to level off, and actually started to drop. The introduction of eReaders and Tablet computing over the last few years has accelerated the trend — but we’re far from being anywhere close to seeing paperless offices.
A 2005 report from the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance found that the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year.
Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, told Newsfactor that “The paperless office is probably still quite far away, if achievable at all. However the proliferation of tablets may bring us much closer to that objective because of their high-resolution screens and print or paper-like reading experience.”
Now in 2013, a number of technology companies have banded together into the “Paperless Coalition” to further push the idea of using less paper. Companies participating in the campaign include Google Drive, HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero and Fujitsu ScanSnap. The coalition says that they are trying “to remove the need for paper from ‘paperwork’.” Meredith Blackwell, Product Marketing manager at Google, wrote that “It’s a new year, which means new resolutions. If you’re up for saving time, money and trees, going paperless might be a good goal for you in 2013.”
You can register your pledge to go paperless in 2013 at Paperless2013.org.
