Why Having Green Printing Policies is Better for Your Business, as Well as the Environment

While we live in an age where we tend to have a number of paper free options for reading things and showing them to people, sometimes only a hard copy will do. While most companies and individuals have already dramatically reduced the amount they print compared with 15 or even five years ago, due to things like electronic cloud based document archives and document viewing facilities on smartphones and tablets, printing can still be a substantial overhead for many people. Additionally, of course, where resources get used, there is an environmental cost, even when you print on sustainable, recycled paper.

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Why Consider Greener Printing?

With many customers now very concerned about the green credentials of the companies they choose to give their money to, anything you do that can improve your ability to say you are an environmentally friendly business is a good thing. More than that though, when it comes to printing, choosing the greener options is actually cheaper. Printing supplies are necessary, but as well as getting a good deal on them by sourcing them from a company likeusaprinterguy.com who offer good value, you also need to make sure you aren't wasting anything.

Change Company Policy to Print More Economically

If you want to save significant amounts of money on printing and you want to seriously change the impact your business' printing has on the environment, you need to make changes to your policies and make sure all staff are aware of them. Of course, there will always be times when it makes sense to print on the highest quality paper in full, glorious color (for instance if you are printing something to give to a prospective client at a sales pitch), so staff should be allowed to use their discretion, but good, clear printing policies that make sense to everybody can be set and distributed to encourage people within the business to change their default behaviors.

Policies to Consider

Here are some ideas for a cheaper, greener printing policy for your business:

·       Some fonts are designed to use far less ink than others. Consider using these as standard fonts for corporate documents, and include this within your company style guide.

·       Default settings for internal printouts (i.e. those not shown to clients) should be in grayscale, draft quality, with two pages per side of paper.

·       All printing (including higher quality prints for customers) should be double sided.

·       If MS Office is used, staff should be reminded of the 'Shrink To Fit' and 'Reduce by One Page' features for documents and spreadsheets.

·       Toner cartridges should be replaced when print quality starts to deteriorate, rather than when the printer warns that toner is low.

Implementing these policies should not be too difficult. You can distribute a memo by email, post the guidelines on the company intranet or other staff network, and include the printing policies with your other IT use policies in the induction materials you give to new people joining the company.

Laser Printers Vs Inkjet Printers – A No Nonsense Guide

It can be hard choosing a new printer. There are so many available in the stores or online that working out which type of printer is going to be right for your office is daunting. There are lots of issues to consider, including cost and print quality, so you will need to sit down and make a list of what features you need the most in a printer.

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Inkjet printers and laser printers are very different. They both perform the same task – that is they print – but they function differently and are suited to different printing tasks. In order to make an informed choice between a laser printer and an inkjet printer you need to understand exactly how these differences will impact on your business (if applicable) or usage at home.

There will be variances between different makes and models of printer, but in general, an inkjet printer is good for printing out photos and less good for text documents. Laser printers are normally used primarily for printing out text documents. They are much faster than an inkjet printer.

Reasons to Buy an Inkjet Printer

Inkjet printers are ideal if you need to print out excellent quality photographic images. With an inkjet printer you can enjoy high resolution imagery, so if your main goal is to have a printer than can produce good quality graphics, an inkjet printer is the one for you.

Reasons to Buy a Laser Printer

Laser printers are popular in an office environment because they are much faster than an inkjet printer. Printing from a laser printer gives you crisp text, which is ideal if you predominantly print black and white text documents. Laser printers are also cheaper per page to run. Small desktop laser printers tend to be black and white only. It is possible to buy color laser printers, but they are a lot more expensive to buy.

Cost of Ownership

Now that we have established what an inkjet and laser printer can and cannot do, it is time to think about the cost of ownership of each type of printer.

Inkjet printers are cheap to buy and are therefore well within the budget of most people. However, the reason inkjet printers are so cheap to purchase is because the manufacturers make their money in replacement consumables, specifically ink cartridges. The printer might be cheap to buy, but the ink cartridges are expensive unless you buy them from discount websites such as usaprinterguy.com. Because inkjet cartridges don’t last very long, the cost of ownership will rise quite steeply once you start using the device regularly.

Laser printers are more expensive to buy at the outset. However, laser printer toner cartridges last significantly longer than inkjet cartridges, so in the long term, they are more cost effective.

Other Points to Think About

Inkjet printers need to be used often or the ink jets inside the printer dry up. If this happens, the print quality will be adversely affected and you will probably need to replace the printer. However, if you need to print color, a laser printer is only cost effective if your print output is high, so do bear this in mind before you splash out.