Back when I worked in a government department in 2000, I tried to persuade the boss to switch to a paperless office. I was appalled at the amount of paper and ink that was being wasted and, being the filing clerk, I was getting the worst end of the deal. But back then, the idea of a paperless office was too radical. Everyone was chained to their printers and paper files, and before I could push the issue, I decided to leave my job.

Fast forward 12 years later, and the idea of going paper-free is not as crazy as it sounded more than a decade earlier. PDF usage is on the rise, note taking apps like Evernote are becoming more and more popular, and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) makes turning everything digital into a feasible and productive idea.  Due to all these factors, my printer has been sitting in the corner, choking on dust and being totally unloved for more than a year now. When I want to save something, I simply make a digital copy and store it either on my computer, put it in Evernote, or transfer it to my iPhone / iPad.  No longer am I tripping over stacks of paper.

But there are still companies who insist on printing, and that is where today's infographic comes in, with some weekend stats crunching for you.  Did you know that between 1% and 3% of a company's annual revenue is based on printing?  And there are inconveniences for those companies - the costs involved in paperjams and excessive use of color ink for a start.  Then there are the companies who go overboard with too many print materials - business cards, flyers, coupons, newspaper adverts...the list goes on.  In this day and age, a lot of these things are simply not needed - the paper versions anyway.

Let us know in the comments what you think.  Do you or your company still go overboard when it comes to printing?  Or are you or your company completely paperless?  Do you think it's time to completely abandon print material such as business cards, and go to digital equivalents?

Click on the infographic for a larger, clearer version

Infographic Source: Intuit.com [Broken URL Removed]

Image Source: Print button via Shutterstock