The world’s paper consumption comes at the cost of cutting down about 4 billion trees each year. The United States uses about 28% of its lumber for paper, equating to about 71 million tons annually. With sobering statistics like these, plus a gathering storm of environmental woes, businesses and eco-activist organizations are ambitiously pursuing measures by which to reduce such impacts.

While many enterprises, especially those with higher-than-average paper consumption, have begun to implement ‘paperless policies’ as part of sustainability efforts, evidence is mounting that indicates simple digitization might not be enough.

One recent report has shown that, despite a positive rise in digital documents over paper, workplace printers are still spitting out reams of it unnecessarily. For example, the report shows that 77% of electronically transmitted PDF invoices end up in hard copy form.

The take-away for business owners is that, while electronic document management is an essential tool both for streamlining process flows and bolstering sustainability policies, it must be supplemented by awareness, training and a breakaway from the habits driving our need for printed paperwork.

Perhaps those most affected by the plague of paper perpetuation make up the vast majority of the building industry in the U.S. In addition to the forms and documentation common to almost every business, firms in the building space also manage tons of paperwork and files, from drawings and plans to important emails and proposals.

With the advent of Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) tools (such as our own eTransmittal application) available to Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) firms, paperless policies are becoming easier to implement.

Vendors and solutions developers are offering more solutions with greater diversity aimed at supporting these industries, as well as other high-consumption commercial environments and their sustainability efforts. Still, the paper-piling pandemic remains a process problem, only partially mitigated through digitizing our documentation.

Implementing tools that reduce an organization’s carbon footprint and/or eliminate waste and paper consumption are typically offering greater additional benefits, such as enabling a contractor to send larger files more quickly or keep track of projects with ease.  If your firm is investing in these types of tools, just remember that if you truly want to optimize the utility and versatility of these advanced assets, there’s still no fail-safe keeping those documents from ending up in the printer tray.