In a continuing effort to reduce printing costs and our overall carbon footprint, CIT has installed an application called GreenPrint on faculty and staff Windows PCs. The GreenPrint solution focuses on reducing the amount of printing by displaying the output prior to release and offering you an opportunity to deselect unnecessary pages, images, or text. We are most appreciative to the Sustainability Committee and the Environmental Management and Business Institute (EMBI) for providing the funding for this application.
Over the past year, CIT has evaluated GreenPrint extensively, and we have implemented it for about 110 pilot testers since August. We believe this application will be an important part of our campus sustainability effort and a valuable print management tool.
The first time you log in to your PC after the installation, you will be prompted with the following welcome screen. It is very important for you to select a target printer for GreenPrint (step 1), so please don’t bypass this step.
You can also click the play arrow in this window to invoke the tutorial. It is highly recommended that you view this 5-minute tutorial to see how GreenPrint works. (Skip the first and last 1.5 minutes if you are really pressed for time.)
Once you’ve selected your target printer, GreenPrint will be shown as the default printer in all Print dialog boxes. Documents printed to GreenPrint will be displayed in an enhanced “Print Preview” format with options for removing pages, text, and images for printing. Pages with less than 5 lines of text are automatically deselected. Other helpful options are covered in the tutorial.
Note: The first print job of the day will take a little longer as GreenPrint initializes. Subsequent print jobs will be much faster. This is a known issue that is being addressed.
GreenPrint can also easily be bypassed by selecting the destination printer directly in the Print dialog box. If you’re in a hurry and are certain you want to print the entire document, please feel free to do this. GreenPrint is not suited for all printing tasks, such as envelope printing where every page is deselected because it has too few lines. GreenPrint is a tool to help you manage your printing, so please use it to suit your individual needs.
You should be aware that if you deselect GreenPrint as the default printer, it will reset itself at next logon. You can choose to opt out of GreenPrint by calling the help desk at x2309, but we ask that you try it for a few weeks before making that decision. If we all do our part, we’ll be able to save significantly on printing across campus!
Other features of GreenPrint:
The following is an excerpt from an article posted on the GreenPrint web site that highlights the substantial costs of printing to an organization and the environment. Based on data collected during our evaluation period, we estimate that UWGB employees print about 6,000 pages per year at a cost of about 3 cents/page (B&W). The savings based on our pilot was found to be right on target at about 16%.
The Real Cost of Printing
It is estimated that the average employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper a year. This volume of paper has an obvious environmental impact and is a considerable expenditure for a company of any size. According to a Citigroup-Environmental Defense study, the actual cost of printing is 13 to 31 times the purchase price of the paper used, or somewhere between $.06 and $.13 per page. At the low end of that range, the average employee’s printing costs the company $600 per year and at the high end $1,300.
A substantial portion of this cost goes to pages employees never even intended to print. A study conducted by Lexmark found that an average of 17% of everything printed was considered waste – pages the user didn’t want. Common examples of this are the page at the end of a Web printout with just a URL or banner ad at the top, multiple pages of legal jargon at the end of airline itineraries, or chain replies attached to an emailed meeting agenda.
A big part of the reason printing costs are so high is the ongoing outlay for printer maintenance and supplies. Printer ink costs about $10,000 a gallon – nearly 2,500 times the cost of gasoline – and toner cartridges and drums are not far behind. A big part of the reason GreenPrint is so effective is because it highlights the size and content of the print job and makes it extremely easy for users to only print what they need.