Happy World Paper Free Day!

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AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) has designated today as World Paper Free Day and invites us to vow to reduce the amount of paper we generate in our workplace and personal lives. AIIM’s research has proven that less paper in our processes leads to huge benefits in efficiency and collaboration—and we can attest to that!

Altec took the pledge to go paperless today and even if you haven’t, it’s not too late to start. For some motivation, take a look at these facts.

– The average office worker in the United States uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. That amounts to paper from 1.2 trees!

– 4 million tons (96 million trees) of copy paper are used annually in the United States—more than enough paper to build a 10-foot-high wall covering the distance from New York to Tokyo!

Those numbers may sound high, but if you were to make a conscious effort to keep track of all the times you scan, copy and print PDFs, you might realize how easy it is to fly through paper every day.

You can lower your numbers by making it a habit to print double-sided, send a coworker an electronic instead of physical copy and resist the urge to print out emails. You can also go one step further and go paperless in your department: consider implementing an integrated document management solution. Document management solutions bring forth high productivity gains and high cost reductions. In fact, a study by AIIM has revealed that 87% of document management projects studied met or exceeded their anticipated payback. To read document management success stories from companies across a broad spectrum of industries, go here.

If you will go paperless today too, let us know on Twitter and use the hashtag #WPFD!