Environmental Cost of Paper in the Workplace

A lot has been written about the greening of workplaces, but the unfortunate fact remains that many companies continue to be huge contributors to environmental destruction, pollution, and climate change. Many of those contributions are in the form of discarded paper. Say you decide to print something out at work. What’s the cost to your office? You might think that that single printing choice—that single piece of paper—doesn’t actually make that big of an impact on your bottom line, but you’d be wrong.

In fact, for every $1 million in revenue that a company generates, they also generate about 8 metric tons of waste, and out of that, 40 percent is just paper waste.  And if your average employee is anything like the average employee at every company, they’re probably using about 10,000 pieces of paper. Wow, is all we can say.

But here’s the thing: Recycled paper is pretty easy to come by. And by using recycled paper, you’re helping to reduce the deforestation of the planet and the increasing amount of waste in our landfills.

So how can you get the maximum out of recycling of paper? This graphic explains it.

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Salman Zafar

Salman Zafar is an ecopreneur, consultant, advisor, speaker and journalist with expertise in waste management, waste-to-energy, renewable energy, environment protection, conservation and sustainable development. His geographical areas of focus include Asia, Middle East, Africa and Europe. Salman is the Founder of EcoMENA, a popular voluntary organization based in Qatar. He is also the Founder and CEO of BioEnergy Consult, a reputed consulting firm active in biomass, waste-to-energy and waste management segments.
Salman is a professional environmental writer with more than 350 popular articles to his credit. He is proactively engaged in creating mass environmental awareness in different parts of the world.
Salman Zafar can be reached at salman@ecomena.org or salman@bioenergyconsult.com

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