Xerox has long been known for innovation and recently they released a Sustainability Calculator which helps companies realise the savings they will achieve by reductions in the number of printers they have.
The calculator is an online Flash application into which companies can enter information about the printers they have and see the savings they will achieve by reducing their number.
In the example below I entered different numbers of non energy star enabled mono and colour printers. I then entered the same number of printers and copies into the optimised scenario section but this time marking the printers as energy star enabled to see the difference an energy star rating would have on the results.
You can get results for Energy, Solid Waste or Greenhouse Gas. The results below are for Greenhouse Gas and predictably the only difference between the two columns is in Operating Energy Greenhouse Gas emissions.
As printers are typically used only between 1 and 2 percent of the time, there is plenty of room for reducing their number in an organisation and still facilitating printing when required.
It may sound counterintuitive that Xerox are enabling companies to see the benefits of fewer printers but since Anne Mulcahy has taken over as CEO of Xerox, it has been heading towards 50% revenues from services and consulting business around document management. Telling companies how to save money and be more green is a growing business.