Every time we print or photocopy we are consuming resources: paper, energy and ink. Ink consumption represents a high economic cost, but also an environmental cost. Therefore, once they have been consumed, they become waste that must be treated appropriately. The UB buildings have special containers for the collection of this type of waste, which form part of HP’s consumables recycling programme, managed by Justprint, the company awarded the printing contract.
Before worrying about recycling ink from printing equipment, however, we need to apply some solutions to reduce the number of copies and prints we make, and thus save ink:
- Before printing a document, think about whether it is necessary: in many cases it is enough to read it on the computer.
- Send and save documents in digital format instead of printing them on paper.
- Configure the document to reduce ink and paper consumption: avoid oversized document borders (2 cm may be sufficient), adjust the font size so that it is legible but not excessively large (a size of 11 or 12 points is sufficient), avoid images with dark tones or colours, which consume a lot of ink and, if possible, avoid using colours when creating the document.
- In the case of printing a document, first think about its destination. In most situations, we can print without images and in black and white.
- Check the document and run the spellchecker to see if there are any errors, to avoid having to reprint it.
- Use the print preview before printing, to detect possible errors, such as blank pages or cut-out sections.
- Make only the number of copies necessary, and print only what you are really interested in. Do not overprint.
- For documents to be printed, use a font that consumes little ink, such as Garamond or Courier.
There are different options that allow you to quickly adapt web pages so that they can be printed while saving the maximum amount of ink, as they eliminate advertisements and images, modify colours, change the size of the lettering, etc.