TURNING WASTE PAPER INTO AN ADVANTAGE
By R08023
What pisses you off in your office? What must be done?
What is frustrating in the company that I work for is that we have a “hot desking” policy and yet, the amount of papers that you have to fill up for any approval is still very high. This result to a lot of paper lying around the office that ends up as trash.
“Hot desking” is a policy that does not assign any actual table to sales and marketing staff of Sony Philippines. The amount of available seats then at the office is reduced to about 50% only of the number of sales and marketing staff and these seats are signed up for once you are in the office. This policy encourages sales and marketing staff to be out of the office almost all the time and do their rounds in the market place where they actually need to be. This is a great and innovative solution to both a smaller work place and in encouraging higher productivity to sales and marketing staffs. However, my main problem here is that the amount of paper works one has to fill out for any request is still not reduced. In the end, one ends up with a pile of paper on his or her desk and since a sales and marketing staff really does not have any permanent seat in the office workplace, it ends up in piling up in the car or getting lost somewhere in the office. Worse, this goes against green policy where paper usage reduction is still not achievable to levels that we intend to comply with.
My solution to this is e-approval – which is not really something new since this has been a practice of a lot of companies now. A lot of companies are implementing this idea to reduce paper consumption for both cost cutting purposes and waste reduction programs. Here are some ways to better implement this program – at least in Sony Philippines:
a.) Remove all paper forms in the office and instead, do it electronically. Develop an in-house program that is linked to the Intranet or to Outlook so as to make it very “customer” friendly. The main reason as to why there is much resistance in the use of e-approval and e-forms is that it ends up being more complicated and time consuming to do. By making it the only possible to get one’s approval done and making sure that it is very customer friendly to use will, I believe, will result to 100% employee compliance.
b.) Encourage paper reduction through recognition. The use of the company’s printers should be monitored through global ID’s and award the top 5 people who has the least number of printer usage every month.
c.) Allocate paper supply to make employees value their paper supply more.
d.) Use of visual workplace to make employees be more aware of the value of paper reduction programs.
e.) Invest in technologies to replace paper usage. A great example is the use of tablet which enables employees to bring their work to other places without having to print things.
f.) Invest in tables which you can write on using pens and erase as quickly. This reduces the use of “scratch papers” because you can use your tables to write down quick notes.
A technology that I want to conceptualize and develop is a portable paper recycling machine that allows quick production of fresh papers from used, old ones. I am thinking of a contraption where in you throw all your papers in, gets shred and goes through a process of paper making similar to principles of the Fourdrinier Machine[1]. I was going through the Internet for a portable paper recycling machine, even one that can create low quality paper, but could not find any. In any case, a portable paper recycling will be a helpful concept to any business, even if it is only capable of producing low quality and quantity of paper.
Another possible option to encourage is the use of eco-friendly papers. It would be very helpful if we can come up with papers that are “washable” using water and special machines that clear it off anything written on it. Imagine having a supply of these eco-papers and after using these papers, are put on a specialized machine that “cleans” it of anything written on it and are recycled back for another round of usage.
These practices, investments and “future technologies” will ultimately achieve reduction on huge amounts of paper waste. The benefits of this are enormous for the company – even beyond the cost of buying new reams of papers for usage. For one, hot desking and storage facilities for documents can be reduced thus reducing space needed. Another is the claim to an environment friendly company which is increasingly becoming a strong preposition for many companies in an increasingly “green” society.
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