Shrinking your organization’s carbon footprint isn’t just about cutting energy use. It’s also about smart resource management (and maybe shaving a few dollars off the bottom line, too).
And few areas are as ripe for optimization as printing . Especially when you consider that inkjet printers produce about 5g of CO2 per printed page (6g for laser printers). That sounds small, but the average employee prints 10,000 pages per year, so those grams add up fast. An A4 96-page, litho–printed color brochure with a run of 20,000 copies for example creates about 20 tons of CO2.
So, how can print management software help you shrink that printing carbon footprint? Let’s take a look.
Print quotas and user-based roles
One of the easiest ways to curb unnecessary printing is by setting quotas and restrictions tailored to user roles. In other words, don’t just let people print whatever they want. For example, marketing departments may need higher color print allowances, while admin teams can get by with black-and-white. By aligning permissions with actual needs, instead of a paper-happy free-for-all, organizations can reduce excess printing without blocking essential workflows. We’ve covered print rules and quotas in more detail over here .
Set black-and-white printing as default
Default print policies matter. Left unchanged, users will always print single-sided documents in full, glorious color. Why? Well, because they can. Enforcing black-and-white and duplex printing as the default via your print management software (or something like Active Directory Group Policies or MDM profiles) can dramatically reduce paper consumption and toner usage. Black-and-white printing generally uses significantly less energy and ink than color printing, so you’re making small gains with every single page.
Track and Report on Print Usage for Sustainability Metrics
What gets measured gets optimized, right? Print management tools provide dashboards and reports that show who’s printing what, when, and how much. These insights help organizations monitor their environmental impact and demonstrate compliance with internal or external sustainability commitments. At a glance, you can see how much toner you’re using, how many pages were printed this quarter, and which users are chewing up the most resources.
Pro tip: create monthly sustainability reports that highlight trends, CO2e reductions, and team-by-team breakdowns. It’s all about transparency and accountability!
Redirect jobs to energy-efficient printers
Not all printers are created equal. Especially when you factor in high volumes and enterprise-level commercial printing. Some are designed for low energy use and high efficiency, while others are power-hungry monsters, always wanting more, more, more. A smart print management system can redirect jobs to greener devices based on current availability and usage load, optimizing for both speed and sustainability. It’s a good idea to identify and tag energy-efficient printers in your fleet, then set rules to route big jobs to these devices during peak hours.
Implement secure print release
You know the worst kind of print job? The one that never gets picked up. Uncollected print jobs are a silent source of office waste. Some estimates suggest 14% to 30% of all jobs never even get collected. Secure print release requires users to authenticate either with a badge or PIN or biometric login at the device before the job prints, ensuring nothing gets printed unless it’s truly needed. You can also combine secure print release with session timeouts , so unprinted jobs get purged from the queue after a set period.
Automate sleep modes and power management
Let’s be real, your printer fleet doesn’t need to be online and active at 3am. Print devices left on overnight, or during idle periods, consume significant energy. And it’s all wasted. With centralized power management settings, sysadmins can ensure devices enter low-power or sleep modes during off-peak hours. You want to schedule these for evenings and weekends, obviously, with protocols to remotely wake printers if any jobs get queued during these times. Also check out: platform timeout settings .
Promote digital alternatives
We’ve all heard, “This meeting could have been an email.” Well, sometimes the same is true for printing. Not every document needs to exist as a physical thing. And sometimes the best way to print sustainably is not to print at all. Modern print management systems can intercept jobs and suggest digital alternatives like PDF previews, digital signing, or shared folders (when appropriate). You can even add pop-up messages to your print flow, asking users, “Do you really need to print this?”
Consolidate printers into shared hubs
Too many offices still use a one-printer-per-desk model, leading to underutilized, energy-inefficient devices. The days of everyone needing their own personal printer are long gone. Consolidating to shared print hubs – networked devices that serve entire departments or floors – cuts down on idle time, reduces maintenance needs, and improves overall device efficiency. So how do you find out which machines are necessary, and which can be safely removed? That’s where print analytics and phased retirement comes in, gradually decommissioning underused devices over time.
Enable BYOD and mobile printing
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and mobile printing can reduce hardware costs, but when not managed properly, they often result in multiple driver installs and redundant print queues. That’s something IT teams should actively avoid. Cloud-based or driverless printing solutions allow employees to print securely without bloating your infrastructure (and your carbon footprint). Try adopting universal print protocols, like IPP Everywhere, or implementing a cloud-based print server that can handle intelligent job routing.
Try carbon tracking widgets
In the same way that we tend to slow down on the roads when a sign displays our actual speed, users tend to print less when they are made aware of their actual carbon footprint. Showing users the environmental cost of their actions can drive behavior change. Print management platforms can integrate widgets or pop-ups that show the estimated carbon impact, paper usage, and even the estimated number of trees consumed based on a given print job. Give it a try and track the results.
