Three decades after "paperless office" entered the business lexicon, the financial and environmental penury to shape paper is greater than ever

by Arik Hesseldahl

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Thirty-three years since this month the phrase "paperless office" entered the business vocabulary in a BusinessWeek article titled "The Office of the Future." In the article, George Pake, the legendary head of the Xerox (XRX) Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), foresaw technology that by 1995 would let computer users summon on-screen documents "by constraining a button," eliminating the necessity with a view to much if not totally the printed paper cluttering workspaces.

Pake’s vision was half-right. Offices brim by network-linked computers, loaded with software that lets users make, read, duplicate, and distribute digital documents. But the dream of a workplace where all that technology would get rid of the need for printed documents remains just that—a dream.

Indeed, some of the very machinery that makes paper theoretically obsolete has helped make it all the more ubiquitous. Devices that scan and convert documents to a digital format double as printers and copiers—and they’ve become so small, inferior, and easy to use that they’re put on—or near—each desktop. "The decision to print has gotten much closer to the owner of the document," says David Pineault, a paper economist and analyst at consulting firm InfoTrends. According to RISI, a exploration confirmed that tracks forest products, in 1975 the average U.S. office laborer used 62 pounds of paper hangings a year. By 1999, that conformation peaked at 143 pounds, but in 2006 it was still at 127 pounds.

Three decades on, the financial and environmental imperative to dwarf paper use is all the more real. Last year, U.S. companies printed 1.5 trillion pages, according to research stanch IDC. That’s a 95,000-mile-high stack of paper, or the equivalent of 15 million to 20 million trees. RISI analyst John Maine esimates that companies will spend about $8 billion this year on paper without another; that doesn’t include costs for ink, toner, or running copiers, printers, and fax machines. In the emblematical office, for every dollar spent on typography documents, companies incur not the same six dollars in handling and partition, according to Xerox.

Little wonder that the will to rush paperless leavings strong in parts of Corporate America. It’s showing up in ways swollen and inconsiderable, from admonitions at the native strength of e-mails to think before pressing the print button, to notes posted alongside printers asking whether all that printing is really necessary, to companywide crusades to conquer paper use.

Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank (PNC) is among financial institutions doing their part by sending electronic statements and credit-card bills. "As a day after the fair as five years ago everything we did was paper-based," says Doug Lippert, a PNC vice-president. "Our customers started asking for paperless statements because they’re used to having their knowledge available immediately."

After a series of promotions, 15% of PNC’s 3 million retail customers began getting their statements delivered by e-mail as documents in PDF, or Portable Document Format, a system developed by Adobe Systems (ADBE). In addition, 80% of internal company reports are created and filed electronically. The company began printing all other documents in continuance both sides of the page by default, and replaced printers and copiers with multifunction devices that combine the jobs of a printer, copier, scanner, and fax machine into a single unit. Companywide newspaper use dropped by 20%. Lippert declines to disclose characteristic cost-saving figures but describes them as "solid." Postage for mailing statements by itself cost other than $1 million a month, Lippert notes.