The New Push to Get Rid of Paper

Three decades after "paperless office" entered the business lexicon, the financial and environmental need to reduce paper is greater than ever

by Arik Hesseldahl

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Thirty-three years ago this month the phrase "paperless office" entered the business lexicon in a BusinessWeek article titled "The Office of the Future." In the article, George Pake, the legendary head of the Xerox (XRX) Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), foresaw technology that by 1995 would let computer users summon on-screen documents "by pressing a button," eliminating the need for much if not all the printed paper cluttering workspaces.

Pake's vision was half-right. Offices brim with network-linked computers, loaded with software that lets users create, read, duplicate, and distribute digital documents. But the dream of a workplace where all that technology would eliminate the need for printed documents remains just that—a dream.

Indeed, some of the very machinery that makes paper theoretically obsolete has helped make it all the more ubiquitous. Devices that scan and convert documents to a digital format double as printers and copiers—and they've become so small, cheap, and easy to use that they're on—or near—every desktop. "The decision to print has gotten much closer to the owner of the document," says David Pineault, a paper economist and analyst at consulting firm InfoTrends. According to RISI, a research firm that tracks forest products, in 1975 the average U.S. office worker used 62 pounds of paper a year. By 1999, that figure peaked at 143 pounds, but in 2006 it was still at 127 pounds.

Think Before Printing

Three decades on, the financial and environmental imperative to reduce paper use is all the more real. Last year, U.S. companies printed 1.5 trillion pages, according to research firm IDC. That's a 95,000-mile-high stack of paper, or the equivalent of 15 million to 20 million trees. RISI analyst John Maine esimates that companies will spend about $8 billion this year on paper alone; that doesn't include costs for ink, toner, or running copiers, printers, and fax machines. In the typical office, for every dollar spent on printing documents, companies incur another six dollars in handling and distribution, according to Xerox.

Little wonder that the will to go paperless remains strong in parts of Corporate America. It's showing up in ways big and small, from admonitions at the bottom of e-mails to think before pressing the print button, to notes posted alongside printers asking whether all that printing is really necessary, to companywide crusades to reduce paper use.

Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank (PNC) is among financial institutions doing their part by sending electronic statements and credit-card bills. "As late as five years ago everything we did was paper-based," says Doug Lippert, a PNC vice-president. "Our customers started asking for paperless statements because they're used to having their information available immediately."

PNC Turns to PDF

After a series of promotions, 15% of PNC's 3 million retail customers began getting their statements delivered by e-mail as documents in PDF, or Portable Document Format, a system developed by Adobe Systems (ADBE). In addition, 80% of internal company reports are created and filed electronically. The company began printing all other documents on both sides of the page by default, and replaced printers and copiers with multifunction devices that combine the jobs of a printer, copier, scanner, and fax machine into a single unit. Companywide paper use dropped by 20%. Lippert declines to disclose specific cost-saving figures but describes them as "substantial." Postage for mailing statements alone cost more than $1 million a month, Lippert notes.