Three green tips from Xerox

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that it takes 10 times more energy to create a sheet of paper than to run it through an office product. Xerox says offices can cut back on paper use by setting your printer to the duplex mode as a default. This means it will automatically print on both sides of the paper sheet.

In addition, be sure to preview printouts to eliminate unnecessary waste; and format and condense text to save paper. Other ways to reduce paper use, Xerox said, is by using e-mail and scan-to-file options; recycling the paper you use and using recycled paper.

To save energy, offices can use equipment certified to the EPA's new ENERGY STAR certification criteria, which increases the efficiency of certified products by at least 30 percent over its prior certifications. Xerox said its ENERGY STAR equipment already installed at customer locations save 1,000,000 megawatt hours, which is enough to light nearly 1 million U.S. homes a year.

One way to ensure an energy savings is by using the power saver features built into the EPA-certified systems. Office equipment is generally turned on 24 hours a day making power management features critical to saving energy, said Xerox.

The company also noted by replacing older individual equipment with a single system that prints, copies, scans, e-mails and faxes uses it can reduce energy costs by as much as $2000 a year for a workgroup of 100 people.

To support recycling and remanufacturing efforts, choose equipment and supplies designed for remanufacturing and recycling; return print and copy cartridges for recycling, and recycle used equipment, said Xerox. The Xerox Green World Alliance Program, aimed at recycling copy and print cartridges, toner containers and waste toner, combined with equipment remanufacturing prevents millions of pounds of waste from entering landfills each year, which totaled 107 million pounds in 2005.

For more information about Xerox and the environment, visit www.xerox.com/environment.