Needless Printing Costs Large Businesses £3,500 a Year

New figures have revealed the amount of money wasted each year by large businesses on ‘needless printing’. The statistics have been broken down to emphasise the quantity of ink and money wasted each year by large businesses, and throughout the average person's working career.
 
As part of ongoing research into the printing habits of people across the UK, the UK’s largest online printer cartridge retailer has conducted a study looking into how much money employees waste by needlessly printing documents, in terms of the ink used.
The study of 1,917 people in full time employment, in businesses with at least 100 employees, conducted by www.Cartridgesave.co.uk, was conducted in a bid to emphasise the amount of money that large businesses could save if employees didn’t print documents unnecessarily.
 
According to the research, the average respondent stated that they needlessly printed an average of four documents per day, each consisting of two sheets of paper. Therefore, if employees of businesses that hire a minimum of 100 members of staff print eight sheets of paper daily, large companies are wasting an average of 800 sheets of paper per working day.
 
If these documents were printed in black and white, on a standard HP Apollo printer that prints 795 pages per ink cartridge, businesses would use 5 ink cartridges a week on needless printing alone. With each cartridge costing £14.01, large businesses are therefore spending approximately £70.05 a week on needless printing alone.
 
Therefore, in an average working year with weekends and bank holidays taken into consideration, businesses that hire a minimum of 100 members of staff waste around £3,544.53 a year on ink used for needless printing alone; equating to 253 ink cartridges a year.
 
As an HP Apollo P-1200 ink cartridge contains 8 millilitres of black ink, and there are 1000 millilitres in a litre, each business that hires a minimum of 100 members of staff is therefore wasting 20.2 litres of ink a decade on unnecessary printing alone.
 
With the legal retirement age for women currently at 65 and 67 for men, the approximate amount of years a person will work in a lifetime, after mandatory education, is 48 years. Therefore each employee wastes around 1 litre of ink on needless printing throughout the duration of their career.
 
Ian Cowley, Managing Director of Cartridgesave.co.uk, said the following about the findings:
 
“We wanted to conduct this research to emphasise to large businesses how much money they are wasting each year on needless printing. These figures only equate to value wasted on ink and ink cartridges; paper and toner have not even been factored in, so the true cost to a business would be much more, all factors considered.”
 
He continued;
 
“I cannot stress enough the importance of cost management when it comes to printing.  I strongly recommend that businesses look into the costs of its printing services, and inform staff that needless printing is not acceptable when costs need to be kept down. Aside from cost, impact on the environment with all this printing is inevitable; so printing should only be done when necessary!”