Increase Your Company’s Sustainability Profile by Offsetting the Impact of Printing

Our planet is undergoing severe changes. Weather is becoming more volatile, and our natural resources are suffering from pollution and degradation caused by waste products.

As the largest producer of trash in the world, the United States generates 40% of the world’s garbage, one-third of which is packaging material.

Another huge landfill occupant? Paper and paperboard. Taking up a whopping 16% of landfill space, 45% of printed paper ends up in the trash can by day’s end. And, with 10,000 sheets of paper each year used by the average office worker, there’s no end in sight.

And there’s another environmental downside to all that paper use: The deforestation caused by tree cutting to supply raw materials for the paper industry. It takes about 24 trees to make a ton of office paper.

This cutting of trees — deforestation — produces 24% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and is the second most significant cause of global warming. To put this in perspective, scientists suggest that deforestation contributes more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than all the vehicles in the world.

While savvy businesses understand the importance of preserving our natural resources, the benefits of developing a sustainability program for your organization run much deeper.

Why Your Business Must Focus on Increasing Sustainability to Be Successful in Today’s Market

Today’s consumers care whether or not the brands they choose support sustainability.

In a recent study, 88% of consumers wanted companies to align with pro-social and pro-environmental values, and that group also showed heightened loyalty to those companies.

Even more telling, the survey showed that a whopping 92% of people are more likely to trust a company that is supportive of environmental and social causes.

That means that sustainable activities like recycling, reuse, and reforestation are good ways to build the level of consumer trust that can have a big impact on your company’s reputation.

These activities are not just good for the environmental — they’re good for business.

However, many businesses rely on printed products to perform necessary daily functions. How can your business move toward sustainability without putting an undue burden on staff?

PrintReleaf — The (Easy) Sustainability Solution

So, are you ready to move toward higher sustainability and corporate responsibility in your organization, but you don’t know where to start? That’s where PrintReleaf, an innovative — and impactful — new program, stands ready to help your company get involved, practically without effort.

PrintReleaf focuses on offsetting print materials by planting one tree for every 8.333 pages of print material you produce, offsetting your carbon footprint and boosting the health of our planet.

In coordination with specific companies in the Managed Print Services (MPS) industry, PrintReleaf automatically calculates your paper usage, transforms this number into a “paper footprint”, and plants the appropriate amount of trees in the forest of your choice.

Not only does participation in the PrintReleaf program restore trees and contribute to the environmental health of our world, but it provides jobs that uplift local economies in areas where forests are being planted. These jobs assist in providing fair living wages to families in need.

Of course, you’ll want to be able to track your progress and report it to your customers, and PrintReleaf makes this easy, too. They automatically track progress over time and provide a Lifetime Certificate that reflects your company’s impact on forests the world over.

Kelley Connect — Your Print Experts in Seattle, Washington

If you are a business in Seattle, Washington concerned with offsetting your paper footprint; the PrintReleaf program offers a simple, actionable solution that is easily incorporated into your current operation.

With PrintReleaf, there’s no extra burden on your staff to participate. The program is seamlessly integrated into managed print to provide automatic tracking and calculation. All you’ll need to do is watch the number of trees your company is contributing to the world’s forests.

As a PrintReleaf partner, Kelley Connect is perfectly positioned to help your company move towards greater sustainability. If you’re interested in learning more about participation in the PrintReleaf program, talk to a Kelley Connect consultant today.