Business & Mother Nature

Recent searching trends would suggest that we're more interested in, or perhaps concerned by, the environmental impact our actions are having whether in business or at home. The buzz around the environment never seems to let go but with good reason. More and more people are looking into solar energy as a superior alternative to fuels which are far more unfriendly and also considerably less expensive. However many of the suggested alternatives are still years away on a grand scale. However it is still possible to do some good and improve the environmental reputation of your company without going to quite such extreme lengths. Not a lot of people know but recycling and ink use is quite a considerable contributor to the poor state of the eco system that we current live in. For a start there are the transportation costs of paper, coming from South America and Asia primarily, which are considerable and probably the biggest contributor, whilst the effects of using printer ink, though small when you consider one printer, but much larger when you think of thousands of printers throwing out ink every minute of every day. Ink is also notoriously difficult to recycle, both when the cartridges are disposed of, which must be done correctly, and also when a piece of paper contains a considerable amount of it. This is one of the silent killers that are effecting the environment each and every day. So what can we do? Well more than you might think actually, however without getting too technical about it. Document scanning. Those two words conjure up images of nostalgia and family photos being scanned for later generations to enjoy, but there's so much more to document scanning these days which can benefit businesses in both an environmental way and an efficient way. If you're company uses a lot of documents on a regular basis and prints as many, then document scanning combined with digital document management is the way to go. The clear the bulk of the documents you should really outsource to a professional document scanning company who can scan tens of thousands of documents on a daily basis, then any correspondence that comes in thereafter will be easily handled by your own staff. What document scanning does is, effectively, make you digital. Your document library will be digital and held either on a computer or server and hosted over a shared network or via web hosting. The plus points towards the environment of this are great, the benefits for your business are fantastic. Beginning with the benefits for you, you'll see a vast improvement in productivity from staff who can now access documents instantly rather than having to wade through cabinets to find the files. Speaking of files, they can be disposed of once you're digital, leaving you more office space, and let's face it, we all need more office space. Digital document management systems are also usually very easy to get into and require no extra knowledge of computers than a basic user would know. From an environmental perspective, you'll find that you use less paper, less printer ink and less printers full stop. This can have a tremendous effect on both your business and the world around us, but it does of course require that many of us make the relatively easy transition. There's no reason not to, now more than ever. The environmental issues in the world might be little more than buzz for many, but it's important to keep in mind how much small things can improve things on a much larger scale. Helping the environment with scanning is the first step you can take, but a major step in helping the world, as well as your business's pocket.

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