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PaperCut, dating apps, and 5 ways to cut waste in your printing

Dating app Hinge proudly claims to be the one app “designed to be deleted.” Swipe, find love, delete and dramatically throw phone into ocean.

Funnily enough, PaperCut is a little like the Hinge of printing – a tool designed to reduce the very thing it relies on: paper use.

Long story short, if you’ve stayed with me till this point, you’ll hang around a little longer for five swipe-worthy ways to print more sustainably with PaperCut.

1. Use Secure Print Release to put an end to uncollected printouts

People get distracted. They print and forget to collect, thus beginning the most redundant recycling process outside of dealing with Amazon cardboard boxes .

But with Secure Print Release , print jobs only release when authorized (via an ID card, login details, or even the PaperCut Pocket phone app ) at the printer.

It isn’t just a solution – it’s total prevention saving up to 12% of print jobs otherwise destined for the recycling bin.

2. Set limits and restrict printer access to keep printing sensible

With print scripting and copy/device scripting , you become the gatekeeper of printers in your realm/workplace to keep activity above board and under budget.

Here are just some of the things you can do:

  • Set daily limits for color copying.
  • Assign discounts for copying and scanning.
  • Block MFD logins over weekends.
  • Restrict selectable accounts at the MFD.

Jump into some easy script recipes with PaperCut Solutioneer James.

3. Run reports to see environmental impact and make positive changes

PaperCut products are packed with insightful one-click reports (even customizable reports) on print activity – from individual user summaries to entire teams and school campus breakdowns.

Environmental reports are definitely our favorite, though. They show:

  • how many trees made up the paper you consumed
  • how much CO2 was emitted to make the paper you consumed
  • how much energy was used up to make the paper you consumed (represented as the equivalent hourly energy consumption of a light bulb).

4. Stay up to date with PaperCut releases to get new eco-friendly features

You can pretty much bank on the introduction of new sustainable printing features in every version release of PaperCut products.

A prime example is our Change Print Job Settings feature that arrived with release 18.2. It lets you pick more mindful settings for yet-to-release jobs when you’re at the printer – like simplex instead of duplex, and color instead of B&W.

Better yet, every change is accompanied by a pop-up showing the resultant savings in paper, emissions, or energy.

5. Set up quotas and payment gateways to make users think twice

Nothing curbs excessive printing like making users pay their own way.

And quotas combined with payment gateways do exactly that. The former gives users an allowance to print, and the latter lets them top it up with their own money.

It’s the ultimate win-win: recoup printing costs, encourage less printing. Plus, boasting one of the largest collections of payment integrations , it’s beyond easy to implement with PaperCut.

Learn more about waste control , or find the right PaperCut product for you to start saving paper today.

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