Business waste detrimental to the environment
April 16, 2018
According to Kit Out My Office, office employees are unwittingly destroying the environment through overuse of paper.
Recent figures show that approximately 50 percent of business waste is composed of paper. With 93 percent of that paper coming from trees, Kit Out My Office, which manufactures FSC and ISO-accredited desks and storage, asserts that we are “hugely impacting the environment we live in.”
In a bid to turn things around, the company is calling for more businesses to turn paperless, “before it’s too late.”
With big name catering brands, such as McDonald’s, Wetherspoons & Pizza Express starting to phase out the use of plastic straws, the company states that it is time to take a look at how offices can do their own part to benefit the environment.
Kierra Box, campaigner at Friends of the Earth said: “Office workers know all of the small ways they should be reducing the resources they use but most of them don’t think to apply these at work. I simply recommend using your common sense and behaving in the workplace like you would at home in terms of using resources.”
A theory repeated by Kit Out My Office suggests that because we aren’t paying the bills at our workplace, we become more careless in our actions. We’re not bothered about how many sheets of paper we use, because we’re not buying the paper.
However, as the company explains, our careless actions are costing the environment. It is estimated that in just 2 years, paper mills will be producing 500,000,000 tons of paper each year, consequently having a huge impact on deforestation, and more importantly, the air we are breathing.
To help remedy the situation, Kit Out My Office offers five effective ways in which office workers can reduce their paper waste:
- Print on both sides, rather than printing single-sided documents
- Share files without printing them, using tools such as Google Docs
- Turn to online bill paying – less money spent on postage, envelopes and employee time while using no paper
- Note take using apps, rather than resorting to paper
- Think before you print – do you really need that on paper, or will it go straight in the bin?
Steve Hancock, Commercial Manager of Kit Out My Office said: “We’re actively looking for new ways to help the environment. If we can help our breathing space and save on the pennies also, why wouldn’t we? Kit Out My Office are following the technical advances in this modern day, and we are working our way towards being a paperless business.”
The issue of the paperless office is one that has been bandied around the industry for some time now, with a number of OEMs weighing in on the debate over the years. Towards the end of 2017, The Recycler reported that a survey commissioned by Brother International NZ had indicated that the paperless office is not currently a practical proposition; however, in the UAE, steps are currently being taken to eliminate the use of paper courtesy of the Dubai Paperless Strategy, which aims to make Dubai the first paper-free government in the world by the end of 2021.
Categories : Around the Industry
Tags : Environment Kit Out My Office Paperless Office Sustainability
