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Dear Sacha,
There
is no denying that the environment is an issue, today. More and
more people are making the move towards becoming more environmentally
conscious. Even those who harbor doubts about global warming have
to admit that doing something that's good for the environment can't
hurt, and that the "environmentally conscious" tag makes for good
public relations. You might be surprised how easy it is to become
more environmentally friendly.
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| Being Environmentally Conscious |
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The Green Office
There
is one thing man offices today still use a great deal of that they
could very well do without: paper. Going paperless has remained a
popular watch word and goal, one with more impact than many at first
realize. All the cardboard binders, dividers, and boxes used to
organize and store documents are also paper products. Small
surprise that the environment is the key reason to control paper
use. It is no accident that the tree has become the symbol for
the health and care of our planet.
As with all such goals, the
first question that is asked is, is it really feasible? It's a
great goal, but how well can an office work without paper? Even
ten years ago that question might have caused such a project to be
shelved, but not today. Today the technology is readily available
to at least reduce paper use considerably, if not do away with it
entirely. Today, a rethink and a willingness to adopt this
technology is all that's needed.
Cost is no barrier,
either. Today even procurement departments like yours can get the
benefit of an advanced, paperless procurement solution at low
cost. That's the purpose of the ElectronicTendering System,
to allow government procurement to become technologically advanced at a
low cost. To give you an idea of how well such costs balance,
consider an office that handles 1,000 single page documents each month
- 1,000 pieces of paper per month.
On average, 10% of all
documents are lost or misfiled. That means each month 100
documents must be recreated. Additionally, the typical document
is copied up to 20 times on average. If even only half of these
1,000 documents were copied, you are now dealing with over 10,000
documents. Ten thousand pieces of paper each month!
Of
course most documents are not single pages, so even if your office
deals with fewer documents you may still face similar numbers.
You can see how quickly an office can come to deal with hundreds of
thousand or even millions of pages each year. Perhaps it isn't
possible for you to go completely paperless. If that is the case,
imagine the impact of reducing the amount of paper used by even
50%. How much would that save you? Ten thousand
pages? Fifty thousand? Perhaps even one hundred thousand
pages or more?
If you still aren't convinced, let us take a look
at one of the hidden costs of dealing with paper. In the typical
office it takes people six minutes to file a document. At 1,000
documents each month that means 6,000 minutes spent doing nothing but
filing them. These 100 hours of filing only take the originals
into account. Add in the time spent making and dealing with the
copies of these documents (as many as 20 copies per document, don't
forget) and the amount of time spent shuffling paper can quickly grow
out of control.
A paperless office is one of those wonderful
ideas that is not only an environmentally responsible move, it simply
makes sense. In addition to the pride of doing something for the
planet, you gain the additional advantage of creating a more
streamlined office where you save on time and work.
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Resources
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Australian Green Procurement
In
Australia they have developed a fascinating site to assist both public
and private sector purchasing to become better at green
procurement. Australian Green Procurement is a website I found to be well worth a look and I encourage you to have a look at it, as well.
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Whatever
the truth behind global warming, I believe this is one subject on which
it behooves us to be safe rather than sorry. I'd certainly prefer
to be able to continue to enjoy nature ten, twenty, or thirty years
from now without having to travel to the most remote parts of the
planet. And when the benefits of going green make so much
business sense, as well, there's no reason not to do it now!
Sincerely,
Sacha Hartmann
YSER Inc.
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