Reducing carbon, costs and paper in the Greener Office

Reducing carbon, costs and paper in the Greener Office

A joint event by BCS Green IT Specialist Group and London NetSquared
Tuesday 2nd November, 18.00 for 18.30 start

Speakers: Gaurav Malik and Mike Kretskis, University of East London.

Small and medium-sized enterprises, charities and other nonprofits could be saving money and reducing their impact on the environment by adopting ‘greener’, less resource-intensive and paper-intensive ICT office practices. This evening event on Tuesday 2nd November will explore how – with a particular focus on ‘green document management’.

BCS London locator map and travel guide (https://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf)

More detail

At the University of East London, they’ve conducted a JISC-funded study of the environmental impact of all the printing done from computers on campus, and have come up with solutions such as replacing desktop printers with shared multifunction devices which provide printing, copying and document scanning on the network. A similar programme of print optimisation is also underway in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Other savings can come from behavioural changes, such as trying to keep born-digital documents electronic throughout their life-cycle, from origination to reading to archive, without ever being printed. Scanning in paper documents can eliminate filing cabinets and the office space needed by them, and enhance the ability to track and search for them with metadata.

Moving document storage from individual PC hard drives to network storage can improve security and efficiency; taking the further step ‘beyond the shared drive’ to a document management system not only typically reduces the need for storage, but can bring efficiencies by eliminating duplicate or out-of-date copies of documents, assisting workflow, version control and improving document search and retrieval.

There are reasons why big companies and government departments are prepared to invest serious money in document management, but that doesn’t mean small businesses and voluntary organisations can't play this game too. There are an increasing number of ‘cloud solutions’ based on Internet services, such as Huddle and Google Docs.

However, there’s a case for being sceptical and careful. It's often better in both monetary and environmental terms to ‘sweat the assets’ for a few years more, maybe switching to computer operating systems or applications that are less demanding of energy and PC power. Care also has to be taken to ensure people are not upset by the change in ways of doing business, and that useful functionality is not lost in the drive to reduce paper use and be green.

The BCS Green IT group and the London NetSquared community are coming together to discuss and explore the Greener Office, led by Gaurav Malik and Mike Kretskis from the Eureka Project at the University of East London, which is funded by the EU to provide advice on Green IT to London SMEs.

Refreshments will be provided from 18:00, and the meeting will start at 18:30 and end by 21:00.

Attendance is free as usual, but places need to be booked by 11am on Monday 1st November, in order to provide the BCS with final numbers and names for security.

(The Green IT Specialist Group is a BCS members’ group, which aims to make computing a force for environmental benefit, reversing the huge current negative impact of computing through consumption of fossil fuel energy and other resources. London NetSquared is an informal community of people chiefly working in or with the voluntary sector, non-profits and social enterprises, and its monthly meetings focus on ICT solutions which benefit the work of the ‘third sector’.)