Do you dream of working in an exclusively digital environment? Is your office a shrine to electronic minimalism, or are you still drowning under piles of dead trees?
The ‘paperless office’ was a slogan cooked up in the 1970s to sell the promise of a world in which all the common record-keeping tasks would occur purely inside computers. Today, office workers certainly handle far more digital documents than they do physical ones. But, like the flying cars we were also promised, the paperless office has not come to pass.
Paper has a nasty habit of hanging around – few, if any, companies have truly managed to wean themselves off the stuff. My company, Minute, is the exception. Along with our parent company Decos, we sit in a futuristic, 100 percent sustainable office in Noordwijk, Netherlands, that is entirely paperless.
Here is how we kicked the habit with a war on paper, saving 16 trees a year and finding new efficiencies – and how you can do the same…
Get Rid of Bins
If you take away the places where paper congregates, you take away the paper itself. Many public transport networks reduce the risk of unseen explosives by choosing not to supply rubbish bins at stations. In the same way, at, we tossed out trashcans to discourage paper. In fact, we went so far as to allow all our employees to throw away any paper they found lying around at the end of the day – regardless whether it was someone’s notes or a document. Our management team even carried out ‘paper patrols’. This was a hard, but highly effective way to get the message across to our employees.
Make Printing Torturous
To go paper-free, start by eliminating your own production of information on paper. The office printer is the hell-mouth through which all office paper emerges into the world, kicking and screaming. We dis-incentivised printing by re-locating our printer in the most inaccessible room. It was a sneaky trick, but it worked – now, there is sufficient extra effort associated with printing that no-one prints out anymore, and we have disposed of the printer altogether.
Enforce a ‘No Notebooks’ Rule Fiercely
Just as information should never be output to paper, it should also never be recorded to it in meetings. We held a notebook amnesty, in which we gave all employees an iPad in exchange for their note-taking books – needless to say they were pretty happy with the trade-off. Now, meeting notes are taken exclusively using digital devices. Not only did this reduce our paper consumption significantly, but it also makes information shareable and transparent.
Return Mail to Sender
Although we do have a letterbox, it has very limited usage as we only check what’s inside every few weeks. If correspondents do send us mail through the post, we reject it and send it right back. This may seem unduly austere, and it may be that we miss out on important information. But this sends an important message both to our staff and to our partners and customers that we live by principles that are important, non-negotiable and in everyone’s long-term interests.
Ban Business Cards
They may seem innocuous, but the business card is an outmoded medium that does more harm than good. In the past, we wasted dozens of hours and many cabinet drawers storing and, eventually, transferring card contacts to our digital address books. So we fought against the tide by rejecting any offer of a business card on the spot. Instead, we politely ask for digital connections through LinkedIn or email instead.
Sign of the Times
Western history seems to have been forged through agreements codified in paper and ink. Even today, when business agreements are drawn up, partners believe paper elevates them to a legal status pixels do not enjoy. But this is a misplaced belief – so we decided never to sign a contract that requires a pen again. We actually implemented harsh punishments for those who dared sign contracts the traditional way, including our CEO, who was condemned to working a full day doing first line customer support after he made the grave error of signing a paper contract. Our alternative to paper and pen? At Minute, we embraced electronic signing tools, which carry full legal compliance and which have further reduced our paper overhead.
Toilet Paper: The Final Frontier
The war on paper can have no limits. After all our efforts achieved 99 percent paperless-ness, the only paper left was in our toilet cubicles. So we got rid of that, too, by replacing our conventional toilets with Gerberit Aqua Clean toilets. Their bidet-style, warm-water spray and dryer system means that, in the privacy of the bathroom, we have achieved of total paper elimination.