Federal agencies could save more than $440 million out of the $1.3 billion a year it spends on printing by cutting back on the amount of printing that federal employees do in the office, says a report following a survey sponsored by the Lexmark company, which sells printers to federal offices and elsewhere.
The average federal employee prints 30 pages of documents a day, and immediately discards about a tenth of that, said the report. About half of employees surveyed said they were unaware of cost considerations of printing, and wasteful printing rates are about the same regardless of the worker’s age.
The most commonly cited reasons for needing something printed include the need to have a signed document, the need to share documents in meetings or with others, the need to edit documents and preferring to do it on hard copy, and the need to keep hard copy files. Nine-tenths agreed that they personally do not need all the printing copies they make in a day, and two-thirds said they could print less and that agency paper trails could be converted to electronic format if agencies had better systems for allowing that.
The report said that only small percentages of employees reported that their offices had policies regarding when to print, restrictions on more expensive printing in color, or requiring personal codes to print.