Cost Benefits of Going Paperless (Reduxe)

Republishing two-articles as one and posting on the sidebar under 'most requested'. This will make it easy for new folks to access these two posts, as was requested by several readers...


Cost Benefits of Going Paperless

An interesting and useful article from about a year back, originally published in The Guardian:

We couldn't break down the figures for the curriculum but we realised that at least 50% was for memos to all staff - paper that would be looked at probably once and then put in the recycling bin. And that's when we realised that we could have a central intranet in the school containing all that information, divided up for pupils and for staff. That was what we identified would free up the paper.

The quote is from the tech teacher at a Scottish high school that's gone mostly paperless. The article is full of great paperless-driven cost saving techniques.


More Cost Benefits of Going Paperless

How much money do you spend making copies?

Our averages here at a school of around 800 students:

Copy paper, colored paper, 11 x 17 paper, & staples = $ 14,500.00 per year
Toner = $ 1, 350.00 per year
Annual service contract for printers = $ 8,400.00 per year

Total = $24,250 per year

You might think this is an exaggeration, but I've talked to many educators who work in faculties of around 60 teachers where the standard max paper use before you need to ask for an extension is 15,000 copies per year. That means that the school fixes its budget on the idea that teachers are going to make on average 83 copies per day. In a faculty of 60, that averages to just shy of five-thousand copies a day.