Xerox Calculator Measures Environmental Impact Of Printers

Xerox has unveiled an online "Sustainability Calculator" that aims to help businesses determine ways to reduce their impact on the environment, while reducing costs.

Available through Xerox Office Services, the Sustainability Calculator evaluates the current office environment of printers, copiers and multifunction devices. It then measures environmental benefits that could be achieved in terms of energy and paper use, solid waste, water, air and greenhouse gas emissions, providing an objective measurement of a company's environmental footprint.

Users input descriptions of the devices they want to evaluate, stipulating whether the printers, for example, are color or black and white, the kinds of cartridges they use, how fast they produce pages, how many of those pages are printed per month and whether the device uses the Energy Star power-saving guidelines.

After the users are asked how they'd like to see the machines perform, the calculator graphically displays energy consumption, greenhouse gases and the solid waste produced, from empty ink cartridges through to the machine's end of life. In one instance, the calculator was able to show Northrop Grumman one sector in which the contractor could save 27 percent in energy usage, 26 percent in greenhouse gas emissions and 33 percent in solid waste.

Although the tool is offered through the solution provider arm of Xerox, the printing giant will provide VARs with this and other methods to help "green" their customers. For example, Gary Gillam, vice president, Xerox North American Channel Operations, said that Xerox has a relationship with a software product that takes out extraneous material from typical email. That results in less paper coming from the printer. And it's not just the United States that is on the green path. Europe's been on it for a while.

"Sustainability is really mission critical in the European marketplace; we can provide VARs with help on environmental issues related to printing," said Gillam. "Printers are largely unmanaged and many companies don't even know how many they have. We can help VARs help their customers through a assessment to help what their printer landscape looks like, and provide an opportunity to get rid of some and move to, say a multi-function printer that can lower their power consumption. Personally, I think the biggest opportunity is to help customers see what their current state is and what their future is."