Colgate brushes up on green print

Stickers asking ‘Do you really have to print this?’ lead to reduction in paper but not print jobs used by Colgate in the US.

In an article in the USA, Jim Bona, (pictured), a technician at Colgate, revealed that Colgate has reduced the amount of paper it uses by 3.7 million sheets of paper. “This means 740 cases of paper were saved,” he wrote. “This might not sound like much, but it is.”

According to Bona, there were several reasons for this reduction:

“A major one is going to double-sided printing (duplex). Another is the print release stations being used to stop, for lack of a better term, reckless printing.  This is a system where instead of a print job being sent directly to a printer, it is sent to an intermediary holding list, where the person who wants the job printed has to go to another computer next to the printer to “release” the job.  It is like having a robot next to the intended printer asking: ‘do you really want to do this?’,” he wrote.

A sustainability group has placed stickers on all the printers and Xerox machines which say ‘Do you really have to print this?’ Yet, Bona admitted this initiative has not meant a decline in printing.

“One thing that hasn’t gone down is the amount of print jobs, so being able to save three million seven hundred thousand sheets of paper is even more amazing when you realize that demand for printing has actually gone up,” he wrote.

The developments mark a new stage for Colgate in terms of its environmental commitment. “There have been other successes which have reduced the carbon footprint due to a very concerted effort by both students and staff. More information will be coming soon about substantial savings of electricity, water and fuel oil too.  We are making progress, but still have a long, long way to go,” Bona wrote.

A spokesperson from Colgate Australia declined to comment on the company’s local print practices.