Matthew Marl
THE INFINITE PURSUIT OF THE
PAPERLESS OFFICE
Overview
 Existing management commitment to the
environment at Pembrokeshire College
 Environmentally sensitive new builds with biomass
boilers / solar electric and heating.
 Pursued and achieved Green Dragon environmental
standard Level 4.
 Winner of Green Gown awards for carbon reduction
(two entries highly commended previous year).
What next and how?
 Investigate areas of highest expenditure first,
environmental savings are often proportional
to financial savings
 Change behaviour
 Raise awareness
 Enlist the help of environmentally sympathetic
staff and students and market the benefits
 Make staff & students accountable, relate to real
money and/or trees
 Offer a viable alternative
The infinite pursuit of the
paperless office
That’s quite a lot of paper………
The cost (GROSS)
 In paper £7,500
 In toner £22,500
 In printer maintenance kits £5,000
 In IT support time ????
 TOTAL £35,000 (NET)
The Objectives
 To reduce the overall volume of printing at
Pembrokeshire College by 20%, saving £7,000
(GROSS).
 To introduce a managed printing solution in
co-operation with staff which raised
awareness without impacting on people’s
ability to do their job.
The Objectives cont.
 To improve the systems hosting electronic
information to provide a viable alternative to
printing by introducing a new Intranet web
based information storage system.
 To improve the uptake to the ‘Moodle’
learning environment by staff.
Raising awareness
Raising awareness cont..
 JISC –
Greening ICT project
(ERGO)
Pledging system
Monitoring progress
 must be owned
 Monthly reporting
 List of repeat offenders for senior management
review
 Internal costs associated
Outcomes
 341,771 pages saved during the academic
year 09/10 representing
 16.3% reduction in printing (staff and student)
 40 fully grown trees - approx 7 tonnes of CO2/year
 £5,700 (GROSS) saved on paper and ink
 These are annual operational savings
 Introduced toner & battery recycling for staff
& students
Outcomes cont.
Pembrokeshire College - Total no. of pages printed per month
GRAND TOTAL ACADEMIC YEAR 08/09 2,097,625
300,000
250,000
200,000
08/09
150,000
09/10
100,000
50,000
0
Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
This academic year
 No time for awareness raising until now
 slight increase in printing over 2009-10 so far
 Reprographics now part of computer services
 Improve system for job submission
 Implement system whereby big print jobs are
automatically redirected to reprographics
 Extend reprographics service to include document
upload as an alternative
This academic year cont..
 Charging system needs to be reviewed –
 for recharging departments the print charge must
reflect the real cost
 Simplify management reporting and billing
reports for finance, and align reprographics and
printing
This academic year cont..
 Interview / chat to highest users
 What are they printing?
 Why so much?
 What systems can be implemented or improved
to support teaching / job role without such heavy
reliance on printing?
 Design centralised printing model
 Less printers, less consumables, lower cost per
page
Ongoing
 Advertise the results and keep the momentum
going
 Make sure management continue to review
printing
 Market the benefits of a paperless office
 Introduce league tables ??
 Adopt other
methods to
embed a
subtle change
of ethos….
Raising awareness