How Your Business Can Help the Environment by Going Paperless

Businesses use paper for different things, from printing receipts and documents to packaging products. What many do not realize is that even though paper is biodegradable, it does a lot of harm to the environment throughout its lifecycle. Businesses that know this have reduced their environmental impact and made their businesses more sustainable by ditching paper.

The Environmental Impact of Paper

Producing paper to meet its global demand requires a lot of trees, chemicals, water and power. It also leads to significant pollution, especially in places where paper mills and associated factories do not use clean power sources. Let’s take a deeper look at each of these below.

Deforestation

While some places in the world recycle paper to reduce the number of trees required to make it, many cut down thousands of trees every year. This is why logging and deforestation are often the most obvious and devastating effects of paper production and use.

Deforestation, which is accelerating every year, harms wildlife, devastates ecosystems and leaves land more susceptible to soil erosion. It can also lead to the loss of farmland, causing famine in areas that otherwise would have enough food.

Another effect of deforestation is increased air pollution and decreased quality. Trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide to produce oxygen. Those living in urban places where nearby areas have lost their tree cover are the most affected when this happens.

We also know that there is a link between deforestation and climate change, making it even more important for businesses to do their part in reducing this type of harm.

Pollution During Paper Production

Paper production continues to harm the environment long after the manufacturers have harvested the trees. Paper production can lead to pollution due to the production of greenhouse gases during this process. While the amount produced is reducing every year, there is still a long way to go before scientists can declare this process as having negligible effects.

This process also requires chemicals used to wash and bleach the paper to turn the brown wood into white pulp that can be used to produce paper.

Almost all the chemicals used in this process, including dioxin and chloroform, are known to harm the people handling them and can damage the environment if they are disposed of improperly.

Also, paper production uses other resources, including water and power. It can take up to 13 litres of water to create a single piece of paper, and most of the power used in doing so comes from non-renewable sources that damage the environment.

Paper Disposal and Waste

Once used, paper is typically disposed of as waste. The paper itself is not the issue because it discomposes, but rather what it carries. The chemicals used in printer ink cause harm, and paper can produce methane when thrown away. The leeching ink eventually gets into waterways, polluting them and making the water unfit for human consumption.

Help the Environment by Going Paperless

Committing to going paperless and doing so can have a significant positive impact on the environment. Estimates say it takes up to 20 trees to produce the amount of paper required by a business that employs ten people. Each tree produces enough oxygen for three people, so cutting them down impacts up to 60 people. Reduce paper usage and you have more oxygen circulating.

Cutting down on paper usage also reduces the amount of greenhouse gases produced when thrown away and the amount of chemicals, energy, and water required to create it.

Digitisation is Key to Going Paperless

Digitisation is switching business processes and workflow to digital versions using technology. It can also involve automating various processes to reduce the load on employees. More importantly for this discussion, digitisation is the best way for businesses to reduce their reliance on paper, how much paper they use, and their carbon footprints.

Switch to Digital Receipts

The first place to start when going paperless is doing away with paper receipts. Instead of asking other businesses to print one for you, ask them if they can email it instead. By doing this, you forgo using paper and stop the other businesses from using ink that can contain harmful chemicals.

You can also do this for your customers. Ask them if they will accept digital receipts instead of physical ones. Due to privacy concerns, many people will not want to give you their email addresses, which is understandable.

Explain to them the benefits of switching to digital receipts. In addition to the environmental benefits, explain there will be a reduced risk of losing their receipts because they will always have them in their email folders.

Businesses that have switched to digital receipts and organise them in the same way also have an easier time when filing taxes. Since everything is organised and no documents are lost, their accountants can do the necessary calculations and file correctly every time.

Use Digital Documents

It turns out that businesses print more documents than they need to. They do this for meeting documents, status updates, financial reports, sharing data and insights, and many other areas. Instead of printing these documents, businesses can use digital documents.

Options like PDFs have made this possible. Its portability and versatility make this form format well-suited for this task. Businesses and employees can also secure PDF files using passwords and digital signage if they use them to send confidential information. Even if they are an excellent option, PDFs also have some downsides. The main one is that they can be difficult to edit.

However, you can solve this easily using a PDF to word converter. This tool transform PDFs into editable text. Once you are done editing the Word file, you can always convert it back to PDF for secure transfer.

Switch to Digital Storage

Cloud hosting and file storage have become so cheap these days that it is no longer a good idea for businesses to own file cabinets. They can scan documents and store them securely on their cloud servers. Things are even easier for received files and documents because employees can upload them with a few clicks.

Using these solutions means you no longer have to interact with paper unless you have to. You also save a lot of office real estate since the servers are located off-premises. You can then use this extra space for anything you need.

Lastly, you do not have to incur hardware, software and infrastructure costs because you do not have to set up the servers and the software they use. The cloud hosting provider will do it for you.

Switch to Online Fax Services

When using a traditional fax, you must print documents before faxing them. Instead of doing this and continuing to use paper, you should switch to online fax services. You can integrate these into your workflow to enable direct fazing from any computer in the office.

You can also use them alongside digital signage tools if you regularly need to sign documents before faxing them over.

Although many people do not think about it, the production and usage of paper have significant effects on the environment. Both lead to deforestation, higher greenhouse emissions, and air, water and soil pollution. Because businesses use more paper than individuals do, going paperless would make a significant difference in addition to helping them save money.