Office paper consumption up
A study by the University of California in Berkeley found that paper consumption in offices has gone up 43% since 1999. The study looked at paper consumption in 2002 and the amazing statistic for me is the average office worker used 200 sheets of paper a DAY! Seems that many office workers print every email they receive during the day. Remember the promises of the "paperless" office?
(via The Houston Chronicle)
Some of this may have to do with regulatory compliance, E.G. HIPAA and all that.
And I know people who print out all their emails.
Posted by: selfnoise | January 11, 2005 at 07:53 AM
This makes no sense to me. I happen to be sitting very near the printer where I'm working right now, and I see the same three or four people there time and time again throughout the day.
Personally I haven't had to empty my recylce box yet in the four months I've been here. I don't understand the desire to print things out, especially with the readability of LCD screens these days.
HIPAA actually forced my last employer to finally move something like 5 million paper records over to electronic form so that they were more easily locked down. It prevents them from having to build a wall to separate the people that work on them.
Posted by: Ben | January 11, 2005 at 09:04 AM
I too try to avoid printing anything I can. But I do understand some peoples need to print stuff - some of them have poor eye sight and insist on reading paper in bigger fonts. According to my wife, artificial lenses used to replace cataracts apparently cause fatigue and problems with emitted light from CRTs and LCDs.
And I guess others just like to write all over things :-)
So my wife keeps printing more paper.
Posted by: Bailey | May 23, 2007 at 09:39 PM