1. Put thermostats for heating/AC in the actual area of the office that they control. We currently have an scenario (and I understand its because of changes to office layout) whereby the AC controller for development is in support. The heating thermostat for downstairs seems to be in development.

2. Encourage people to open windows rather than automatically turn on the AC.

3. Deploy some software that auto hibernates all PC’s left on overnight. And timers for all other non essential electronic equipment.

4. One that I suspect is very simple to do – draught proof the front door – it’s got a 1 cm gap which lets in quite a lot of cold air in the winter!

5. Have a close look at the central heating timers to see if they do only come on when needed. I have a suspicion that our heating is on much more than it needs to be.

6. Turn off all lights before leaving at night.

7. Turn of the AC before leaving at night.

We should then measure the amount of recycled material vs. the non-recycled to see if we are reducing our paper usage.

Alex

I’ve now had time to think this through and in answer to the question asked – Paperless how? Here are my suggestions;

Before you press print, ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary. Do you have a digital copy of the e-mail / document? Why exactly do you need a printed version (duplication)?

Educational documents /whitepapers are accessible on-line and can be downloaded from the website. Duplicates are then sent out in the post (marketing being the culprits here).

The accounts department can request and send out electronic invoices. Online banking can be used to issue checks, and set up automatic recurring payments. (The accounts department have requested that several documents be embossed and hard copied to save printing. To date no action has been taken).

Use the print preview function before you print off documents, this will hopefully highlight any alterations that you may need to make an avoid printing useless pieces of paper.

All departments could send electronic faxes instead of paper faxes and print on both sides of a page.

If the company need to use paper, maybe they could use the recycled kind throughout the business.

The benefits
Going paperless can reduce costs for toner, ink, electricity, and other related expenses including postage and storage.

The current multipart sets are sent/taken to clients – forwarded to Harpenden and then sent on to Access in Colchester. It strikes me as a slow and inefficient way considering we are an IT company.

1) Availability
2) Experience

…and we never get to 3) Distance from home

I will get started on this measurement now – I think the results in terms of now vs. the optimal model will be very interesting.

Also correlating assignment of new sites with the home address of the consultants as part of the decision process might be helpful.

Another idea would be to place small paper recycling bins at each desk & make staff walk to throw away non recyclable materials rather than the other way round as it is now.

Alex