I work for a large, highspeed printer manufacturer and we often said the office will be paperless when toilets are. Well, the Japanese have made paperless toilets and still a lot of paper goes down the drain, likewise there is still a lot of printing in offices. Whatever losses there are due to increased electronic copies are being more than compensated for by the increase in what we call “Transpromo”. It means adding promotional messages to transactional documents like phone bills and bank statements. With relatively cheap color now available, your billing statements and so forth are loaded with advertising and targeted marketing. Our business is going well and you can expect even more garbage mailed to you each month. The use of color requires better quality paper, which means continued need for new trees, not recycled paper. Add to this all the people who get their electronic statements and print them on their home PC printer and trees should continue to fear man.
Before computers, we may have gone through a few sheets of paper a month. When computers started coming on line, I started buying the box of 12000 sheets at Costco.
Recently, I realized that we now buy a single ream (500 sheets) at a time, and that’ll last us for months. I also know that the amount of paper in our recycle bin has gone way down too.
In the beginning, the ease of making documents greatly increased the amount of paper used. However, computer displays were too poor to read from. I know that my wife use to print out all of her email. Now, with better displays and maybe because we’re just use to it, we now simply read off the screen.
WTF are the pointy brackets after “New York Times” for? Failed HTML markup? Unintelligible “TM”? Typographic rendition of “spit on the ground after saying a hated name?”
While you were busy panicking about chocolate, you may have missed the real cause of blind terror closer to the end of the list: WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TEQUILA! :eek:
My office has been converting our old files to electronic format. We hired a company to scan the documents and create a few basic record keys (name, ssn). So far we’ve emptied 22 file cabinet drawers with documents dating back to the 1970’s.
For new records getting rid of paper isn’t as easy. The paper flow through the office from one desk to another is a PITA to do electronically. Files sometimes need to pass back and forth between staff. Sticky notes get attached. Crossed out when work is done. We can’t afford to mess up our workflow by making untested changes.
Go into any office supply store, like Staples - and more floor and shelf space is taken up by copier/printer paper, printers, and printer cartridges than anything else.
I would like to see what fraction of these stores sales’ are related to hardcopy.
Looks like we’re still pretty committed to hardcopy.
During the 90’s I personally witnessed more Dilbert strips being printed to hang on cubicle walls, alone, than the entire world’s paper consumption of 1953-64. With the paperless computer came the internet and then loads of new stuff to print.
If we’re running out of Tequila, we’ve got bigger problems than some “tree shortage” anyway. :eek:
The (medical) company I work for has gone paperless. We’ve got a great system for electronic charts…
Print out forms for patients to fill out.
Scan forms into EMR; shred forms.
Run tests; print test results to doctors.
Doctors print out interpretations to at least 3 locations within our company. Shred results.
Fax interpretations to referring/family physicians. Shred interpretations and fax confirmation sheets.
Fax interpretations plus new copy of registration forms to Home Equipment (HME) companies. Shred interpretations and registrations forms. Oh, and fax confirmations.
HME faxes set-up and compliance information to main location. fax to specific lab, upload to EMR shred multiple copies.
PAtient comes back for a follow-up; print out new copy of interpretations, study results, HME records, etc.; shred after visit.
Repeat step 8 multiple times over the course of the next few years.
So yeah, paperless offices aren’t going to reduce printing and paper use so long as it’s done in this sort of manner. And if they continue to be operated int his manner, it’s going to lead to a much quicker depletion of the tequila supplies.
Wise One, you said that steno pools disappeared due to the digital age. This may have been true in the US, and for many businesses in general. Over here in Australia, however, in the public service of the late 80’s, steno pools disappeared for a much better reason. People - women mainly - realised that steno pools were a career dead end and pushed for all those typists to be merged into the general workplace.
This happened, and at around the same time as increased computerisation, and what happened next was that all those ordinary workers had to learn to type themselves. Guess who got ahead in leaps and bounds, career-wise? Yes, those lowly stenographer types, the ones who could enter data and type letters at the speed of light!
Or then there’s my advisor’s method for editing computer code: She tells one of her grad students to print it out for her, then she goes over it with a red pen for the changes she wants, and hands it back to the grad student, with instructions to make the changes and print her out a copy of the edited version.
Making computers much less stupid would be the best idea. Unfortunately, I think the industry likes the way things go these days (only occasionally am I a conspiracy theorist). As the saying goes, though, make something foolproof and they’ll just make a better fool.
Aside from that, paper is nice. You can jot notes on it, strike through, doodle, daydream and, yes, conspire, without having to learn yet another lame interface, set of codes or device.
Btw, here is a link to the aforementioned Business Week article.
Right, those of us in the industry are just sitting on incredible advances in artificial intelligence that could earn us millions and millions of dollars just to spite the end user.
Powers &8^]
To be fair, most of the shredding is done to meet an interpretation of HIPAA for identity protection and confidentiality. Once the paper copies aren’t needed for their specific task, they are shredded. Of course, having one set of paper copies that actually gets moved around would reduce the amount paper used.
We’ve been hearing about an electronic forms process to replace our day-to-day process for over a decade. No progress on that front. One of the big holdups is the need for eTablets or the like for all shop technicians and engineers, for us to have access to the paperwork real time while doing work. Then there is the electronic “signatures” required for each step and validation of the user’s identity for each buy off. So far, paper works better.
But we did enact an electronic drawing approval cycle and drawing database, so we did reduce paper some. We still have to print out copies to work to, but not just for reviewing or looking up a detail every now and again. Also stopped printing full sized (B, C, D, E sided drawings) and now use 11" x 17". Much easier.
The whole focus on “the paperless office” is wrong-headed to begin with. Most people think we are cutting down old-growth forests or something in order to print our documents, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Paper companies grow trees for the explicit purpose of turning them into paper. In other words, these are trees that would not exist if there was no call for paper. It’s like trying to save cornstalks by calling for less corn consumption. It doesn’t make any sense.
Moreover, these are not majestic redwoods or stately oaks; they are hybrid trees that have been engineered for, again, the explicit purpose of being turned into paper. So not only are they trees that wouldn’t exist in the absence of paper demand, they are trees that wouldn’t exist at all in nature.
I’m all for cutting out paper consumption, just based on my engineer’s hatred of printers and printing technology. But thinking about it from an ecological standpoint, well, let’s say there a lot of things we could focus on, like reducing gasoline consumption, that would have a much more positive impact on our world.