The Future of Documents

… but Xerox is doing a pretty good job. This Greenbiz article confirms that Xerox does more than “preaching” about sustainability, but also makes significant savings through internal “green” initiatives.

More than 50 projects were presented for internal Earth Day awards, which helped Xerox eliminate 1.3 million pounds of waste and reduce energy use by 500,000 kilowatt hours – this while saving $7.3 million.

Whether finding creative ways of recycling packaging, replacing refrigeration systems, or adhering to the Forest Stewardship Conucil Chain of Custody, these innovations and knowledge are then shared across the corporation – and with customers.

After discovering the great news that Xerox was now considered the top “green” outsourcer (all domains included), I wanted to figure out how we were doing on our legacy market: electronics.

The latest Greenpeace “Guide to Greener Electronics“, published yesterday, nails down companies like HP,  Dell and Lenovo, but Xerox does not appear.  HP dropped significantly in this quarterly report, from being “middle of the pack” one year ago, to being 14th out of 17th (although for all of its electronics divisions). Unfortunately, this ranking seems to be mostly about PCs, not so much about printers or other electronics, so Xerox does not appear.

However, searching for more information on the topic, I stumbled upon GoodElectronics.org, a very good resource on the topic. This then pointed me to Covalence’s Ethical ranking.

Geneva-based Covalence tracks the ethical reputation of multinationals by sourcing information from the media, civil society, and companies. The most active criteria in 2008 have been: Environmental impact of production, Social sponsorship, Waste management, Information to consumer, Eco-innovative product, International presence, Downsizing, Product environmental risk, Labour standards, and Anti-corruption policy – so Sustainability weights strongly in the final ranking.

Great news: Xerox made it to the 5th position in this year’s ranking, second only to Intel in the “Technology” sector. The full table of results can be found here.

The report published by The Brown-Wilson group positions Xerox as the top ranking green outsourcer ! This report explores how new economic dimensions are impacting the growth of the sustainability technology sector.

Xerox is ranked “greenest” in the Document Process Outsourcing area by its clients, which is not too surprising. The criteria used included sustainability metrics, social and economic principles, environmental principles, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating system, and Six Sigma.

But even better, when asked to nominate which outsourcing companies are the “greenest”, Xerox comes first with an astounding 440 nominations! That puts Xerox in front of Accenture (429), CSC (403), CapGemini (396) and IBM Global (390). HP / EDS comes 10th, with 259 nominations.

That is a huge progression from last year’s 35th position in that same ranking. That shows that customers now see Xerox as the trusted outsourcing partner that can take them on the journey to the “Less Paper Office” – reducing overall carbon footprint of their infrastructure, using less paper, less energy, generating less waste, but also optimizing their Document Business Processes to remove paper – when appropriate- and improve overall quality.

That’s what we call “Smarter Ways to Green”: click on the video below to learn more.

Just wrapped up a webcast on Money Saving Content Management Strategies. This started as a very interesting discussion with Brian Lincoln and other members of the Docushare team, on how ECM could contribute to some of the core topics covered in my blog – going “Less Paper”, being green, improving productivity – all that while cutting costs.

In this webcast, Brian covers present – working – strategies for Content Management, while I talk about some of the Future of Document Technologies that will have a strong effect – all that in 24 minutes.

In the Attachments tab, you’ll be able to (re)discover a video of Transient Paper, showing how it can be imaged using UV light, vanishes over a few hours, and can be re-printed over and over again.

Enjoy!

Interesting love and hate relationship between the U.S./state governments and paper, as reported in a few articles on Greenbiz.

On the one hand, a study of the U.S. government shows that $440 million out of the $1.3 billion, is “wasteful” or transient paper usage.

The “2009 Government Printing Report” is full of very interesting numbers and facts. For example:

•  it is estimated that a Federal Employee discards 35% of printed pages the very same day, which ends up being 2,520 pages per year – or 6.6 billion pages each year.
• 54% of the employees or not aware of the cost involved in printing.
• the main rationales for printing documents are signatures (57% of respondents), need to review / share (51%), preference towards editing on hardcopies (41%) .

More surprising facts include that 38% of respondents still use paper to file / archive, but also that Gen Y workers have almost the same behaviour towards printing paper than older generations (print and discard almost the same).Anyway, lots of interesting facts that are worth reading through.

On the other hand though, the state of Washington is leading the way towards sustainable and responsible printing by edicting a very aggressive green printing law. By using only recycled paper, enforcing double-sided printing, and launching paper conservation programs, the state wants to achieve a reduction of 30% in printing by next year, but also saving $1 million to state taxpayers, and saving around 43,000 trees and 15.7 million waters.

One thing we should note is that this “over-waste” of paper is not specific to government agencies. Many large and medium companies still do not know how much they spend on printing, and the figures are often the same order of magnitude or even above those listed above. And, it is not only about paper – it is also about carbon footprint and energy consumption of your print infrastructure, about toner usage and waste generated by the devices, and about lost efficiencies due to paper travel – all of which you can read more in the Less Paper Office White Paper.

 In any event, whether a government agency or in the private sector, you should investigate Smarter Ways to Green if you are serious about reducing your impact on the environment – while lowering cost. Click on the image below to learn more.

As we have seen in many of my previous posts, color can really help augment your document. The “Less Paper Office” is not only about printing less, it’s also about printing better to make your documents more powerful – and here comes a great new way to do so.

I don’t usually blog much about Xerox machines, but the new ColorQube 9200 is a real breakthrough. It brings together Xerox’s well proven solid ink technology with very advanced Multifunction device technology, including very high-speed network connectivity, speeds up to 85 pages per minute, and a configurable / programmable User Interface (Extensible Interface Platform) that lets you scan documents directly into your business process applications. You can read more on the technology innovations such as illuminated paper path, long-life repaceable cleaning unit, and others, or even see a virtual demo here.

This new Multi-Function Device is green, too. Beyond Energy Star compliance, it also benefits from the solid ink technology benefits – smaller carbon footprint, reduced waste, and local recycling - leading to up to 90% reduction in waste.

If all this was not enough, the new ColorQube 9200 introduces a new – and cheaper! – way of printing in color. This new flexible pricing plan, based on a 3-tier model, makes you pay a price which much closely matches the actual color ink you use. In particular, this plan allows you to print much more powerful documents (Black plus Useful Color, i.e. highlight color on word documents) at the black-only rate! 

To make it even more convincing, you can even use the associated Cost Savings Calculator to simulate how much you could be saving with this new offering!

Today is Earth Day! Although you should contribute everyday, here are some special things you can do today:

5. Use Less Toner

4. Print on High Yield Paper

3. Compute your print infrastructure’s carbon footprint and react

2. Read about the Less Paper Office and implement

1. Learn about Smarter ways to Green by watching the video below (click image)

Fujitsu’s FLEPia, the first color ePaper device, is now on sale. Only available in Japan, it sells for a bit over $ 1000, which is quite high. However, the specs are quite impressive: 8 inch screen, 260K colors, Wifi, Bluetooth, SD card and miniUSB support – not to mention a touch-screen. It can go for 40 hours without a recharge (estimated to be around 2400 page turns, as it only requires power for page re-draw). Just like the Kindle, it connects very nicely into the Number 1 Japanese e-book server.

As Wired points out, this device sounds like more of a convergence between e-books and PDAs, since it is powered by Windows CE 5. You will therefore be able to run many applications on this device like email, simple electronic document editing, web browsing etc… this makes the price tag a bit more acceptable.

Anyway, a device that should go a long way into making e-Paper an integral part of the Future of Documents. 2009 might very well be the year for ePaper after all.

My biggest question is, does color (at least the kind of color it can render) really make a difference for e-Readers? I am not sure about the contrast and quality, which has improved by a factor 1.5 from these pictures. Still, I am pretty sure it will be far from its paper competitor- the glossy and shiny magazine. The gap between paper and electronic will be much more noticeable than for Black and White documents.

This is the provocative question that Ursula Burns, president of Xerox, asks in this Business Week article.

As she points out, green might have been overhyped over the last two years. But in these troubled times comes the moment of truth: will those green aspirations continue? She cites a recent corporate responsibility survey that estimates that 31% of companies will see their Corporate Social Responsibility budgets decrease.

Fortunately, green is not only for the sake of green – it’s also a way to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. For example, Xerox reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 18% since 2002. But the bottomline is, these efficiency improvements also allowed us to save a solid $ 18 million dollars in 2006 only.

How do you optimize your IT?  improving your data centres is an obvious one,  but don’t forget to optimize your print fleets, and make the less paper office a reality by improving your business processes.

Xerox’s sustainability calculator was cited among the Green-tech trends for 2008 on the Sustainable IT blog. Excellent visibility for this tool which lets you estimate the energy, greenhouse gases, and solid waste generated by your current printer fleet, but also test “optimized scenarii” and monitor how effective they can be.

The “Less Paper” effect or potential reduction in paper consumption is not yet measured in the tool – but this kind of environmental benefits are better measured in a more thorough assessment.