Last September we reported that the savings as a result of the new printing system were already significant. Now almost a year after implementation we can show that the targeted areas in the university used 39% less paper than what they would have during 2010. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘paper’
Printing system saves paper, water
Friday, March 25th, 2011
FollowBenchmarking Sustainable IT at universities
Friday, October 15th, 2010Our peers in Australia (CAUDIT) have progressed much further with benchmarking between universities – including benchmarking on the sustainable IT or “green IT” front. South Africa’s equivalent HE IT association, ASAUDIT, has largely adopted CAUDIT’s benchmarking metrics. The Green IT benchmarking metrics are discussed briefly below.
New printing system starts to show savings
Saturday, September 11th, 2010The university typically consumes between 54 and 60 million sheets of paper per annum. That’s a lot of paper. Earlier this year we implemented a new printing management system that utilises energy-efficient multi-function printers (MFPs) and seeks to minimise wastage and unnecessary printing by defaulting to duplex printing (printing on both sides of the sheet) and implementing “pull” printing (where the user requests his/her print job by presenting the proximity student/staff card at the printer). This has been rolled out on 176 MFPs in student computer user areas (CUAs) mostly. And the results are already significant.
During August, the first full month of operations, the savings on over 3 million page prints were as follows:
- 900,000 sheets as a result of duplex printing
- 395,000 sheets as a result of “pull” printing (i.e. sheets that would have been printed if the user did not have to request them at the printer).
That represents a saving in paper of over 30%.
The percentage of all print jobs that were duplex was 62%, while the pull print ratio was 70% – which reflects the fact that some devices are not yet being operated in “pull” mode but are being tracked.
Ultimately, up to 600 devices will be managed by the system.
Besides the green and savings aspects of the solution, it also facilitates secure printing at a shared MFP, as the user’s job is only printed when the user presents his/her card at the MFP. Uncollected jobs are automatically deleted after a preset, configurable period. The project leader is Le Roux Franken – feel free to contact him via this blog if you have questions.
In another initiative that seeks to reduce paper usage amongst other goals, one faculty is piloting a laptop-per-student initiative from the beginning of 2011 in partnership with the IT Division. All learning material will be digitally preloaded onto the laptops which will sync to an online e-learning repository when connected.
Printing footprint @ Stellenbosch University
Friday, March 27th, 2009Further to Le Roux’s post – which indicates an average annual printing volume of 16 million pages on our network printers – I ran the numbers through HP’s carbon calculator (in this post). The results are … sort of scary….
Printing volumes @ Stellenbosch University
Friday, March 20th, 2009From 2003 to 2006 network printing volumes at Stellenbosch University have increased tremendously. In 2003 only 350 000 pages were logged, in 2006 16 200 000 pages were logged!
Luckily it seems that these volumes have stabilised. During 2007 18.2 million pages were logged. Last year 17.6 million pages and during the first quarter of 2009 4.2 million pages were logged. (more…)
Printing carbon footprint calculator
Thursday, February 26th, 2009Here’s a useful tool for calculating the carbon, energy and cost impacts of printing solutions. As we know printing volumes on campus are enormous – and enormously wasteful. This calculator helps you calculate the environmental and cost impact, obviously shows the savings and lower impacts to be realised with HP gear, and compares their solutions with those of competitors. What is really nice is that it can be localised for South African Rands and energy costs.