To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what mechanisms are in place to ensure his Department's economical use of paper. (128008)

From information held centrally, the amount of printing paper purchased between April 2005 and March 2006 was 829 tonnes, and for copier paper 235.8 tonnes. The Department is taking the following steps to ensure its use of paper is economical:

a move away from paper-based records management towards electronic records thereby reducing the volume of paper-based information held locally. In time, this will reduce the volume of paper stored in archives;

DEFRA has revised recently its procedures for records management so that more of DEFRA's records can be created captured and stored electronically rather than printing to paper;

double sided printing as standard if documents need to be printed at all;

printer rationalisation and reduction as part of DEFRA's IT and facilities management strategies;

online communications or events for its external communications;

expanding the scope of e-publishing for key publications;

moving towards binless offices as part of DEFRA's facilities management strategy.

All Departments are required to meet cross-Government sustainable operations targets, launched last year. The targets for reducing their waste arisings are 5 per cent. and 25 per cent. by 2010 and 2020 respectively, relative to 2004-05 levels; and for increasing their recycling figures to 40 per cent. and 75 per cent. of their waste arisings by 2010 and 2020, respectively.