Why carry out a paper audit? Carrying out an audit of your paper use and disposal is useful because it:
1. Is easy to see what products are bought from where and at what price, providing a quick tool of reference when comparing prices etc. with potential alternative products

2. identifies potential savings and wasteful practices

3. enables targets to be set for reducing paper consumption

4. provides an accurate figure for the amount of paper waste generated by your office. This information is very useful for potential recycling collectors when setting up a paper collection for your office.

How much paper is your office using?
We've outlined below some ideas for an easy approach to this, based on a audit which was successfully carried out. You should get useful figures which you can calculate in the future (e.g. annually, quarterly or monthly) to monitor whether paper use drops (hopefully!) or rises. To give you some example figures that audits can produce, one organisation found its 3,500 staff used 75,000,000 sheets of office paper a year (107 kg per capita); whilst a smaller office with a range of measures to reduce consumption used 7 reams of paper (total 17.5 kg) per capita per year.

Auditing consumption
1. a. Use your invoice records to work out how much office paper you've bought (e.g. each month or quarter). or

b. Arrange for your office paper suppliers to measure your consumption (e.g. a monthly figure) – stipulate this when they tender for contract. From number of reams bought you could convert to number of sheets or weight of paper.

2. Get a per capita consumption figure by dividing total consumption by No. employees (in a large organisation ask personnel/human resources department for regular figures)

Auditing recycling
a. Count or estimate what volume (e.g. number of sacks) of paper you collected for recycling over a given period.
A sample volume (e.g. typical sackful) could be weighed so you can convert volume to weight (for comparison with consumption figures).

or b. Your paper collectors could be asked supply figures (approx) for amount collected over a given period.

We hope you find this approach requires limited effort to get useful audit figures. We would be keen to hear of any adaptations to this approach which you found more practical in your office. Please let us know your figures - particularly when you repeat the audit in the future to monitor what effect your consumption minimisation efforts have had! If you'd like to talk the process through with us - don't hesitate to give us a call (020 8404 4886).

How many trees is your office using?
It is possible to convert your office paper consumption into units of the number of trees needed to produce it by inputing the number of reams your office used into the following formula:
R / 30 = T
R = Number of reams your office used
30 = Number of reams produced from one tree
T = Number of trees your office used to provide its paper
NB This formula is valid for 80gsm office paper only.

Setting targets for reducing paper consumption
Display the results of your paper audit for staff to see in relevant places, e.g. by the photocopier, on the stationery cupboard door, or in the newsletter. This is the baseline for improvement - the aim is to use less. Later on, savings achieved - both in paper and money - can also be displayed.

Last updated 18th September 2007