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Need a quick way to eliminate paper waste, reduce ink usage, and save money? Learn to print green. There are a bunch of tips and tricks, most of which we hope you already practice. You know the saying: “Every penny counts”? This concept applies to a printed piece of paper too. Every piece of printed paper has a price value attached to it in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, ink usage, and trees cut down. In today’s digital age, most communications and interactions are generally conducted through the Internet. However, we all know that sometimes you just absolutely have to print a webpage out. When printing is the last resort, here are some tips on reducing waste and saving those precious trees:

Printing Tips:

1) Go Digital: Probably the most important one out there. This idea has taken businesses by storm. Even though you might not always be able to, try sending documents and information using email or eFax. PDFs are a great way to go. It’s pretty much universal and works like a charm. Need to carry documents around? How about a flash storage device?

2) Buy Recycled: Be proactive and find a recycled paper supplier. Don’t know where? Run a “Recycled Paper” search on a search engine (a green one preferred). Here’s a bonus. We took the liberty of running the search for you and came up with these great resources: “Save a Tree – Print Green” from Green Options, Why Buy Recycled? from RecycleWorks, and The Green Office. Have a Twitter account? @thegreenoffice to keep up-to-date.

3) Print double-sided documents: If you’re going to be printing multi-page documents, print them double-sided if possible. It’s a simple way to conserve your paper. Don’t know how? Just print out the odd numbered pages, flip them over and then go back and print the even numbered pages.

4) Double-check: Proofread and proofread again while the document is still on your computer to eliminate reprints because of errors. We’re all human and will make mistakes, but double-checking your work always helps.

5) Reuse misprinted papers: If pages get misprinted or you find errors, keep them and use them for scratch. We’d recommend starting a box or a pile to store these “draft papers”. Keep them handy. If you want, you can even cut them into smaller squares and use them in place of post-it notes.

6) Learn your software and print options: Make sure you know the tools you have at your disposal. Learn the options regarding printing that comes with the software you’re using. For example, most word processers and programs give you the option of selecting page ranges when printing. Take advantage of it and avoid printing what you don’t have to.

7) Recycle: Do your part and properly recycled your sheets of paper when you don’t need them anymore. This paper will be turned into other paper products. How cool is that? If you don’t have a recycling bin already, grab one!

The Golden Rule: As the WWF puts it: think to yourself; “Do I really need to print this?” before you press the button.

Tools to help you get it done:

Let’s go through a couple of tools that’ll help you save paper and ink.

Keep in mind that in a lot of browsers have options to print only selections. This means you can select text in your browser, hit Ctrl+P and change the print options to “selection”. Don’t print what you need and save money! Printing in black and white will help you save your color ink.

1) Lexmark Toolbar Add-on: If you need to customize your printing, try the Lexmark Toolbar. You can save ink by removing images and color when you print. You can also easily print only highlighted portions of a site.

2) PrintWhatYouLike Button Add-on: This add-on ties in with PrintWhatYouLike, a web-page editor that allows you to choose what you want printed.

3) PrintWhatYouLike: Excellent tool. All you have to do is input a URL, edit the page online, and then print it. It’s easy to condense webpages, reducing paper and ink usage. @pwyl

4) Printfriendly: Another great online editor for editing websites before printing, Printfriendly grabs the webpage and allows you to remove images and even blocks of text if needed. It prints cleanly and shows a print preview. It even includes a “get PDF” option. @printfriendly

 

 

5) GreenPrint: Eliminate pages that don’t need to be printed by using GreenPrint, a program that runs on your computer and acts as another printer. When you need to print, simply select GreenPrint as the printer, take out what you don’t need, including images in just one click, and print away. You can even save the edited files as PDFs and send them. View a demo here. Here is their twitter: @greenprint

 

If you have more resources for green printing, please share it in the comments. We know we haven’t talked about using soy-based inks, but it is definitely an option. Anyone know much about them? Cheers