The Department has taken steps, over a number of years, to encourage staff not to print off e-mails, and other documents, unnecessarily. In particular, the following actions have been taken:
at staff sustainable development awareness events one of the major messages has been that staff should not print unless strictly necessary;
over the past 12 months the Department has introduced a new managed print service where existing printers, photocopiers and fax machines have been replaced by multi-function devices. This has reduced the number of print devices by three-quarters. The ratio of staff to printers has reduced from 3:1 to an average of 10:1. The fact that most staff must now walk further to collect their printing is seen as a disincentive. Where printing is necessary the default on the new printers is duplex which reduces the amount of paper used. As computers are renewed we also have a policy to supply these with larger screens, to better enable staff to read their documents on screen;
all staff in Information Services Directorate have an environmental strapline on their e-mails. Although this is changed regularly, previous straplines have reminded staff not to print unnecessarily. Other groups within the Department have adopted similar straplines; and
the amount of waste paper generated in the Department has reduced from 522 tonnes in 2004-05 to 329 tonnes in 2006-07, a reduction of 37 per cent. This greatly exceeds the Government target to reduce overall waste arisings by 5 per cent. by 2010. While there are a number of factors that have influenced this figure, it does indicate that printing of ephemeral documents (which are destined for the waste bin) has reduced.