Cloud printing can help SMEs reap the rewards of going green
A recent report ‘Green Ambition: unlocking sustainability opportunities for small businesses’ revealed that small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) need more support to implement sustainable best practices.
The Green Ambition report finds that while most small business owners want to make a difference and have objectives beyond profit, only one in five plan to adopt Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) measures and only a third plan to introduce Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies or track their environmental impact.
Going green has become much more than simply taking steps to make a difference, it must now be a business imperative. The UK Government is committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and beyond this, there is increasing pressure on firms from consumers to demonstrate that they are sustainable operations.
What’s interesting is that 70% of SMEs agree that the environment should be prioritized over profit, yet many are still a little confused about how to put that belief into action: some are unsure of what sustainability is, while others struggle to identify the best sustainability programme to put in place.
What many SMEs have yet to realize is that they don’t have to choose between profit and sustainability. By making the right technology decisions and leveraging the cloud – it’s easy to improve their green status, as well as achieve cost savings to boot.
Take Print to the cloud
For SMEs looking to reduce the environmental impact of print, remove reliance on-premise hardware and save some money, it makes sense to head to the cloud.
directprint.io includes a suite of features that encourage eco-friendly printing:
Save paper with reprint detection. This means your printer will see when a document has already been printed, or if only one or two pages have been changed since the last print, and only print the amended pages–not the entire document. First prints of larger documents can also be defaulted to draft mode to save on toner.
Gain full print visibility and prevent waste. Users receive detailed reports on their entire organization’s printing, highlighting areas of concern, addressable errors and other issues that can be resolved to save on unwanted printing and costs.
Take back control of your printing. Specify print budgets by room, user, printer and more, so you know you’ll never overprint again. You can even set up notifications to alert your staff when they are approaching the end of the specified weekly or monthly budget.
Say goodbye to blank pages. Smart mode lets printers ignore blank pages or pages with only a line or two (such as footers and other unnecessary text) to cut down on wasted paper.
Instill a sustainability-first culture. Our Print Nudge feature keeps your employees green by encouraging eco-responsible printing through timely notifications, so they always remember to think about saving on costs and materials when printing.
Cut color costs. Our Smart Draft mode lets you set rules and restrictions on mono-only printing and introduce colour reduction modes that can save you toner, paper, and countless empty plastic toner cartridges each month.
Ready to get your sustainability progress back on track and save paper, profits and the planet while you’re at it?
Cloud printing = eco-friendly printing
You can find out more about our sustainable cloud printing solutions here and can even kick things off with a free 30-day trial, so you can test the benefits for yourself before making any decisions.