 |
 |
|
Issues surrounding current print practices:
In Fall 2008, the HTC’s spent over $25,000 in printer paper and toner alone. This does not include the cost of parts and man-hours for routine printer maintenance, or replacement costs for printers that are no longer serviceable.
While most printouts are used for GCC class work, a surprising amount is used for personal activities, class work for other schools, or simply left behind in the many recycle bins available throughout the High Tech and Library Media Centers.
Go Green: In addition to the paper waste that is seen in the open labs, associated print waste, such as toner cartridges and printer maintenance kits are hardware waste that is unseen by the client.
Runaway print jobs: Some advertising intense or poorly formatted websites produce lengthy print jobs. These print jobs can easily exceed 150 pages and are sent unknowingly by students to the printer.
Duplicate print jobs: Some jobs are formatted in a way that takes a long time for the printer to load. Sometimes there are jobs from many users sent to the same printer at nearly the same time, and a single user’s job may be in a long queue of other jobs. When users don’t see their job right away, they often tend to send it again, or send it to another printer, without deleting the first job.
PowerPoint slides and PDF files: Some users are not aware that they can print PowerPoint files as handouts with more than one slide to a page, or that they can target specific pages of a PDF file for printing without having to print the entire file.
Some GCC printing statistics:
276,115
That is the average number of printouts per month in the High Tech Centers and Library Commons during the Fall 2008 semester – that equals 552 reams, or more than 55 boxes of paper. Laid end to end, that’s 48 miles of paper in one month!
In October of 2008, 6456 users printed 348,017 pages. The average printout in that one month was more than 53 pages per user.
Over the total Fall 2008 semester, 1,380,573 pages were printed. Taking into consideration a student population of roughly 20,000 students, the average printout per student for the semester was 69 pages per student. Keep in mind that not all students print or even use the open labs. If we assume that only about 6500 users are actually printing, as is the case in October, that comes out to more than 200 pages per user for the Fall 2008 semester.
GCC spent over $25,000 in paper and toner alone for printing in HT1, HT2 and the LMC open labs during the Fall 08 semester. This does not include the cost of new printers or the maintenance and repair on the fleet we already own.
During the week of 4/24/09, we accumulated 99lbs of recycled paper from the HT1 and HT2 Pits. Converting that to reams, we are talking about 49.5 reams of abandoned print jobs in that week alone. At 10 reams per box, that is almost 5 boxes. At a cost of $30 per box that is almost $150 of wasted paper in one week.