It seems to me that there is something about human nature which causes us to identify a threat (i.e. environmental impact of printing), and then focus on that threat to the exclusion of other more pervasive threats. Or perhaps it is just that going out for a coffee is the “in” thing to do, and printing is not.

Clearly there is an environmental impact to just about everything we do, and I’m not trying to justify inaction by taking this to a ridiculous level, but maybe we should broaden the focus to “Think before you consume.”

i got a problem thats realy annoying…..

ive got the same printer(as shown in the image above) that we use in the building…

so wjen a user wants to print 2copies of a document, it prints 4 pages…WHY???

i only want 2 copies, why give me 4???

please help..

thank you

Maybe you can’t change behavior this time around, but instead can cause people to think about it next time.

My personal reasons are:
1. I’m working on something fiddly and constantly swapping windows in order to cross-refer to something is both irritating and not time-effective
2. I want to do some background reading/research - I tend to save up papers, then print them off before a long train journey. I can annotate a paper copy far more easily and without the need for electricity.

Our network printers are set to duplex print by default, and I sometimes set it to 2 pages per side (i.e. 4 pages per sheet of paper).

One question is why the approximate costs of printing locally are so hard to find. I wanted to compare a print shop costing against printing on demand on the network colour printer, but I couldn’t find the figures to demonstrate that toner etc costs made the print shop cheaper. Provide those figures - “it cost 12p and generated 0.xg CO2 to print this page” - and people can see the invisible costs to business of printing.

I’d love to find a way of indicating who it is who prints off work then never collects it as they clearly print things automatically without considering why they are doing it.

They can’t or won’t use a projector in a meeting, so they copy the stupid slide deck 10 times for everyone around the table plus two waste copies.

They don’t want to do a web conference, so they make you attend to be fully informed, so they copy the stupid slide deck 10 times for everyone around the table plus two waste copies.

They want to leave something behind so you remember their sales call, so they copy the stupid slide deck 10 times for everyone around the table plus two waste copies.

Once you have an effective answer for that, maybe the whole problem changes. The things I can think of are,

1) Convenient reading (e-ink readers would help with this, or cellphones with usable reading displays)
2) Presentations (how can we transfer information differently?)
3) Archiving (there are plenty of solutions here already, why are they not used more effectively?)
4) Antiquated systems and processes (e.g. certain companies require an original paper invoice instead of an electronic one)
5) Readability (displays need to improve to allow easier reading, but this ties in 1.)
6) Habit (social pressure would be most effective, “Printing is sooo last year,” but awareness of the real cost would also help, i.e. amount of trees, water etc. that go into making paper)

Next I typically wish that people would (metaphorically) make a big sign for themselves to look at all the time, which would read, “Think first.”.

Somehow I have a hard time believing that if we don’t get ourselves into the habit of thinking before we act/speak then no machine is going to do it for us.

Does anyone ever tie a string around their own finger anymore?

Maybe better to get it into a printer driver, something an office’s IT staff can configure for hundreds or thousands of users.