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GREEN SCANNING:

Xerox and Océ offer tips to make the workplace more eco-friendly

Green scanning with Xerox and Oce

Large format scanner manufacturers are not proactive newsmakers when it comes to the environment. This is because there is little in the use of a wide format scanner that is as inherently damaging to the environment as, say, a large format printer.

Large format scanners are most likely to cause harm to the environment when they are being manufactured and distributed worldwide. Other environmental factors are the scanner's packaging, its use of electrical power and its recyclable content. These issues were covered in a previous article on Green Scanning.

Xerox XES Synergix
XES Synergix
Energy Star compliance
from ISO 9000 accredited Xerox.

Most large format scanners are now Energy Star compliant or strive to be. Most manufacturers are also ISO 9000 compliant, which means they are committed to environmental planning and management during manufacture. As a result, the most that large format scanner manufacturers do is promote their eco-friendly production techniques, WEEE, RoHS and energy-saving Energy Star compliance.

This is good but can they do more? We think so.

We want to see the wide format scanner industry do more to provide CAD users with advice on how to use large format scanners more effectively within a greener technical drawing office. While there is little that Colortrac, Contex, Graphtec, Image Access, etc., can do to make their large format scanners greener, they can still use their influence to create awareness that will drive the green agenda forward.

A precedent has already been set by Xerox and Océ.

As far back as 2003, Xerox offered seven tips to make the workplace more eco-friendly. This week, Océ came up with six similar tips to make the workplace more environmentally friendly. While very little of this advice is specific to large format scanning and is clearly intended to sell their products, there is good, general green information here worthy of the eco-friendly CAD user's consideration. For those who have read this far and laugh, the bottom line is that many green solutions lead to saving money.

Large format scanners are a lot "greener and cleaner" than large format printers. Raise awareness of green scanning and you create a ripple that raises concerns about the bigger CAD picture - environmentally unfriendly and wasteful large format printing practices. But even here, wide format scanners and their software can make a difference when it comes to saving paper, particularly in scan-to-copy applications.

The large format scanning industry can do more to change entrenched practices.

Low Level Warning:
As befits the purpose of press releases, the supplied information is not exclusively about saving the planet. It is also an attempt to encourage you to buy products.

Océ's Six Tips for "Green" Document Management Practices

1. Adopt scanning practices.
Rather than copy and store physical documents, organizations can scan and store electronically. Employees retain digital copies that they can distribute electronically, and at the same time avoid accumulating files filled with paper. As a conservative estimate, scanning can reduce paper consumption by one to three percent.

Oce CS4100
Océ CS 4100
Energy saving sleep mode
but NO Energy Star compliance.

2. The workgroup alternative.
To the extent possible, replacing personal desktop printers with workgroup MFPs (multifunction peripherals that combine print/copy/scan/fax functionality in one machine) shared by departments can have a strong positive impact. One financial services company replaced 1,100 copiers and printers and 1,000 fax machines with 400 MFPs. The initiative eliminated 1,700 machines that no longer consume resources based on their manufacture, transportation, operation, maintenance, and eventual disposal.

3. Leverage "smart" technologies.
Enterprises can use MFP "smart" technologies such as Personal Mail Box, Fax-from-Desktop, Scan-to-Email/File Folder, and Document Routing in order to decrease paper and chemicals used in printing. This can reduce paper usage by up to three percent.

4. Default to duplex.
Most multi-page documents don’t require the text to be printed on one side of the page. Newspapers, magazines and books use both sides (duplex printing). With effective fleet management it is possible to change office practices and make duplex printing of multi-page documents the norm. This can potentially decrease paper use by up to 50 percent.

5. Turn off document headers.
Document headers are pages that contain identifying information and precede every print job. If headers are turned on by default, every print job will consume an extra sheet of paper. If headers are turned off for all users, organizations can reduce general office paper consumption by an estimated 18 to 28 percent according to Océ Business Services client analyses.

6. Bulk up.
Buying paper and toner in bulk can reduce transportation, packaging, and storage resources. Buying in bulk also often results in cost savings.

Xerox's 7 Tips to Make the Workplace More Eco-Friendly.

1. Use paper efficiently.
Making two-sided prints and copies, printing multiple images per page, and printing on-demand - creating documents only in the quantity and at the time needed - prevents waste and saves energy. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates it takes 10 times more energy to manufacture a piece of paper than to create another print or copy.

2. Recycle the paper you use, and use recycled paper.
Install bins in several office locations to make it easy to collect paper for recycling or for reuse as notepaper. And commit to purchasing recycled paper - it can meet the same performance specifications as non-recycled paper. Xerox offers recycled papers with up to 100 percent post-consumer content, as well as an expanding line of papers made with chlorine-free processes.

3. Reach for the ENERGY STAR.
Upgrading old products with new, more efficient systems will save energy. For example, a large bank customer reduced annual energy consumption by 34 percent, or 1.9 million kilowatt hours, using Xerox ENERGY STAR-qualified copiers and MFP products instead of equivalent non-ENERGY STAR products. At $0.10 per kWh, that translates to savings of nearly $200,000 a year in electricity costs. Nearly all Xerox systems are designed to meet or exceed these energy standards - and the savings add up. In 2001, Xerox calculates that its ENERGY STAR-qualified products in customer locations around the world enabled electricity savings of nearly 1 million megawatt hours.

4. Replace stand-alone office products with MFP (multifunction peripheral) systems.
Evaluate your work requirements; an office copier, two printers and a fax machine can consume 1070 kWh of energy each year. But if one MFP system can handle your document needs, it uses only 800 kWh annually. Xerox studies have shown that the annual energy consumption of a Xerox Document Centre MFP system is typically 20 percent to 30 percent less than the combined annual energy consumption of the individual ENERGY STAR copier, printer and fax products it replaces. If the MFP system replaces products that are not ENERGY STAR qualified, energy savings can double.

5. Return print/copy cartridges and supplies for recycling.
Never throw a spent toner cartridge away; these components have multiple lives. Xerox provides customers with prepaid postage to return cartridges for reuse and recycling. In 2001, more than 7 million cartridges and toner containers were returned by customers, preventing 16 million pounds of material from possibly entering landfills. Remanufactured cartridges are built and tested to the same performance specifications as new-build products. Or, consider using solid ink printers, which eliminate cartridges altogether and generate about 95 percent less waste during use than a typical color laser printer.

6. Seek office equipment with remanufactured or recycled parts.
Despite a decade of proof, there are still buyers who mistakenly believe that products with recycled-part content are not as good as those built with all-new parts. Remanufacturing printers and copiers is a practice Xerox pioneered, and involves rebuilding and upgrading returned products and parts to as-new appearance and performance. This practice kept 149 million pounds of waste from going to landfill in 2001, and energy savings from parts reuse totaled 500,000 megawatt hours - enough energy to light more than 380,000 U.S. homes for one year. Since 1991, Xerox has reused/recycled the equivalent of more than 2 million machines.

7. Use scan-to-file and scan-to-email capabilities.
Hardcopy documents can be easily shared electronically using scanning features and software built into office systems, such as the Document Centre family. By decreasing the need to fax or mail hardcopy documents, these features help eliminate paper inventory, save phone and postage charges, and minimize the environmental impact of delivering documents by air or ground transportation.

For those interested in simple, practical everyday green tips for the workplace, here then are two press releases, one each from Xerox and Océ.

Xerox Corporation
How Green is Your Office? Xerox Offers 7 Tips to Make the Workplace More Eco-Friendly. Read now....

Océ Business Services
Océ Shares Tips to Help Businesses Implement "Green" Document Management Practices. Read now....