Paper, what paper?

[adapted from the Globe and Mail]

Workplaces have been thinking about how to achieve the mythical "paperless office" for decades, albeit with little success. In 1975, Xerox engineer George Pake told BusinessWeek that future office desks would include a "TV-display terminal with keyboard" that could call up reams of documents, files, mail and messages. "I don't know how much hard copy [paper] I'll want in this world," he said.
As it turns out, we can't get enough of it. Statistics Canada reported in 2006 that Canadians' paper consumption "more than doubled between 1983 and 2003" and that "the production and use of paper products is at an all-time high."

Environmental and cost concerns have made paper reduction more of a priority in workplaces both large and small, and companies are turning to a variety of new technologies and services to meet their goals. Little by little, offices are digitizing their paper-based processes and documents.
Companies are working toward using less paper. Many are switching internal systems to paperless ones: payroll, paystubs, expenses, invoices....These systems have taken up a lot of paper in the past. A paperless office (or at least a less-paper office) is a worthy goal, but we have a long way to go yet.

By the numbers

7,800: Average number of pages printed at work each year by Canadians.

39: Percentage of those pages that end up in the trash.

21: Percentage of Canadians in 2008 who believed they were printing more paper than five years ago.

20,000: Total number of pages of paper consumed per capita by Canadians each year.

1,200: Estimated number of square metres covered by that amount of paper.

94: Percentage increase in per capita paper consumption by Canadians between 1983 and 2003.

30 to 35: Estimate of the percentage increase in printing that is a result of e-mail and the Internet.

(Source: Globe and Mail in August 2009 WasteWatch)

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