Office workers guilty of "carefree" printing habits

British office workers are responsible for printing up to 120 billion pages a year, the equivalent of a paper mountain over 8,000 miles high.

That is the startling findings of new research released today by Fujitsu Siemens Computers, which also uncovered worryingly "carefree printing habits" among office workers that result in billions of pages being wasted each year.

The survey of more than 2,000 people from polling company YouGov found that the average employee prints out 22 pages each working day with many of these going straight in the bin. Over half of respondents admitted to printing the same document several times by mistake, while only 47 per cent claim to avoid printing hard copies wherever possible.

The research also found that many employees who do want to limit paper use receive little support from employers, with around two-thirds of companies having no printing policy in place. Equally, only 16 per cent of workers said their company carries a footnote asking the recipient whether they need to print out the message, while a third of companies even fail to provide paper recycling bins.

Dave Scott of Fujitsu Siemens said that this "lax approach" to printing policy was having a massive environmental impact in terms of paper and energy use. "We are talking about a reasonable-sized forest being used up every year along with a huge amount of energy used to print unnecessary documents," he said. "People are in the habit of printing things out even when they don't need to, but all that is required is behavioural change, and improved policies, processes and systems can deliver that change."

He advised that firms should audit their current printing systems and policies, ensure that only those who need to print documents have authority to do so, and educate users on the importance of conserving paper.

Scott added that there were also solid commercial reasons for better managing paper use. "There has been research [from analyst firm IDC] showing up to three per cent of a firm's revenue can go on printing costs," he said. "There is potential for massive cost, as well as environmental, savings."