The paperless office is about as likely as the paperless lavatory. They have been pushing it for almost as long as nuclear fusion power stations and flying to work by jetpack.

Well, it really depends, doesn't it? The paperless office I mean, not the other examples.

I used to be more of a programmer, data analyst in previous jobs. I did print a few things, especially when reading technical, mathematical or scientific texts - it just seems easier to do that on paper. Jumping back and forth, cross-referencing, folding parts of pages over, heavily commenting and marking with a pen is just not possible (or not as easy) in any electronic format.

Now I am more of a penpusher, having a more manglement-oriented position. Interestingly enough I now print less. I produce way more documents, but as they are simpler in some way (no hard to understand equations) I print way less. Maybe for the last readthrough before stuff is finally submitted to the higher echelons in the diverse boards that have to make the final business decisions.

I also find it interesting that in the whole of the company, on average, people seem to print much more than I ever did. Talking to my closest colleagues tells me it is not our department.

But I completely agree: fully paperless is not going to happen.And I believe it is a good thing. Should we print less? Sure. Does a ton of unneccessary stuff get printed? Also yes. Can we completely get rid of printing documents? No way.

Now, where can I get my flying car thingy that I was promised? I don't find jetpacks that appealing, it's just too cold in winter...

We will be using shells soon :)

The paperless lavatory will happen any bi-day now.

...sorry...

I think it's already happening - many lavatories I have seen include bidets, with toilet paper being more of an afterthought.

Back of envelope* calculation:

- 16 A4 pages per square metre

- 80 grams per square metre

2800000000000/16*.08 = 14000000000kg = 14 million tons. Ouch!

(*) Taken from recycling bin

Look at the bright side: all those official documents that nobody reads, ever, but which must be preserved for decades just in case, are all captured CO2.

I've been in the IT side of this business for 15 years - and have sold Tin as well as Solutions "to reduce print" - sorry no paperless is a ridiculous concept - we reached a plateau a number of years ago and I cant see any reductions.

Even in my firm - which is one of the largest players - and promotes Print Management! - you should hear the howls when we changed the print server 2 weeks ago, meaning printing was offline briefly or the ERP system doesn't print for 20 minutes.

Its not in the industries interest of course we know that - but the customers don't want the change - and with the largest sectors I've been involved with - Education and Financial the demand has never seen major falls.

The biggest reduction in print volumes? - Covid and closed offices.

When I was a councillor a few years back, all council meeting minutes had to be printed out, signed by the chairman, then scanned back in, to be emailed out as massive PDFs. Changing the procedure to allow electronic signatures would eliminate the need to print anything, and result in smaller less energy sapping PDFs.

My wife briefly worked for a legal firm -

Half her job was scanning in paperwork. The other half was printing emails!

The big but commonly ignored hazard of fully paperless is that records become ephemeral. I have handled physical books up to around 300 years old, and mostly they're still in pretty good condition. On the other hand, quite part from the intrinsic durability limits of electronic records (e.g. charge leakage from solid state devices, physical wear of spinning discs, connectors &c.), standards and technologies keep changing, so for both reasons regular re-archiving becomes essential. Equally important, reverse engineering of obsolete devices is becoming increasingly difficult as the technologies become less and less transparent (and frequently proprietary). So to read that document, we have to contend with connector pinout, signal and power voltages, data encoding, file format, content encoding and more.

Only on Star Trek are centuries-old computers still operational and their files immediately accessible to folks who never saw the equipment before.

Only on Star Trek are centuries-old computers still operational and their files immediately accessible to folks who never saw the equipment before.

I guess they stored all their files in the cloud then.

... ducks for cover ...

I'm 57 years old. I've been programming since I was 14. I have lost my email, lost access to accounts, and fried entire computers so many times I've lost track.

If it is tax-related, it gets printed. I trust my computer as far as I can kick it down the block, and as it is a massive server case, that isn't very far...

On a related note, I read recently the story of how Lancaster (UK) lost the 'leccy for several hours in the 2015 storms. Folks were so glued to technology it was a shock to many how much they were reliant on it. The paper records, your grandads filofax etc were still all accessible (even though the mobile phones were mostly dead) so yes I also understand why print still matters.

Our development office uses printers just to print the stuff HR/accounting offices require us to print and sign, because they don't accept any other way. They look unable to provide forms in PDF (let alone websites...), nor accept them signed electronically and not printed on paper. We also have to deliver them personally... probably they believe this way they can impose those pesky employees pay reverence to HR and accounting.

I really forgot the last time we replaced the toner because it's very few pages per month.

That said, I print some legal documents too because my backups are OK but I prefer to have a printed backups as well. While traveling abroad in the past weeks I also had some printed copies of tickets and the various needed visas and certificates - my phone could always have an issue or simply a depleted battery.

So that's what MFD stands for! I could have sworn it stood for: Mal-Functions Daily!

We're a software dev company, the company isn't entirely paperless, HR and finance still print and keep stuff for regulation purposes, but the rest of the company hardly prints anything. I use the printer maybe twice a year. At home, I've had my laser printer prob over six years and I changed the cartridge once, it had most use out of it when I was unemployed and had to deal with unemployment bureaus which love the stuff, they love you to submit reams of paper to them every month, and they used to bury me in the stuff right back, giving my binders to file the masses away in.

Now back in a programming job, I have a notebook to take a few notes now and then, some postits to stick on monitors and a few pages from courses I attended.

AT home, most of my outgoing costs are automated and they don't send me paper bills any more, apart from my health insurance, which still sends me paper, but I think it's another regulatory thing here.