It can be hard to believe, but plenty of people still print out every email they receive, along with websites with information they want to remember. Even ignoring the fact that this information is still accessible to them, printing such material is often inefficient: there are ads that no one needs and formatting that forces a one paragraph email to take up two pages.

For businesses that aren’t working toward sustainability, this sort of practice is wasteful. It uses up plenty of paper, an office supply that the company must keep replenishing. For greener companies, though, printing on this scale can be a big issue.

Until computers are as reliable — even when the power is out — as paper, the practice will continue. But there are options available to businesses to reduce both the cost and waste of extensive printing. GreenPrint offers a software package that makes printer friendly versions of any page. Their software reformats emails and other text, eliminating problematic formatting and unnecessary advertising.

GreenPrint’s software is easy to download and is available for free online. It is compatible with Windows machines only — a Mac version would be nice — but the developers behind GreenPrint have made an effort to create an easy-to-use piece of software.

Using GreenPrint isn’t much more complicated that printing in general. You will see an extra dialog box between hitting print and watching your papers pop out of the printer. That dialog box lets the user select what portions of a print job will actually be printed — perfect for email, directions on the web or other incidental print jobs. GreenPrint also simplifies saving as PDFs, making it possible to avoid printing entirely in some situations.

The software also tracks the savings it provides — a metric that any CFO would be happy to see. You can open up your copy of GreenPrint and see how many pages you have saved, as well as the cost of those pages you didn’t have to buy. You can even calculate the number of trees saved. According to GreenPrint’s website, worldwide the program has saved, so far, 282 trees, 2.3 million pages and 1.6 million pounds of CO2.

The free version of GreenPrint’s software is supported through advertising. For less than $30, you can upgrade to an ad-free version, which is preferable for most businesses.

Not every business is ready to switch to soy inks and sustainable papers. But installing (and using) GreenPrint is a fast way to both green an office and save on paper costs.

Image — GreenPrint