Xerox Corp. on March 25 unveiled the Sustainability Calculator designed to help customers pinpoint opportunities to reduce their environmental impact while reducing costs. The new software tool measures the overall impact a company's document technologies have on the environment.
The Sustainability Calculator evaluates the current office environment of printers, copiers and multifunction devices and then measures environmental benefits that could be achieved in terms of energy and paper use, solid waste, water, air and greenhouse gas emissions.
For global defense and technology company Northrop Grumman Corp. the calculator was able to show one sector where it saved 27% in energy usage, 26% in greenhouse gas emissions and 33% in solid waste. This sector of Northrop Grumman had more than 2,000 printers, hundreds of multifunction printers and stand-alone copiers prior to leveraging Xerox Office Services -- which optimized the office to less than 1,100 devices.
"This calculator cracks the code to help offices of any size really understand just how 'green' their offices are or could be," said John Kelly, president, Xerox Global Services North America. "The same people who are environmentally conscious at home are starting to bring this awareness to work, but in many cases, they didn't know where to start. We designed the Sustainability Calculator to be an effective environmental assessment tool. It provides customers with actionable recommendations to help them achieve their 'green' objectives and in doing so realize cost-savings and efficiency gains that come with an optimized office environment."
The Sustainability Calculator not only tracks document technology from Xerox but also printers, copiers and multifunction devices from other companies. It employs proprietary algorithms and document assessment research to deliver data about a company's entire fleet of office products, from printers to multifunction devices and copiers, regardless of the equipment supplier. After the initial analysis that generates a detailed sustainability evaluation of their operations, Xerox partners with customers to create an energy-saving office environment. Some of the changes can be as simple as moving devices to different locations to replacing personal and single-function products with multifunction products. The calculator can also detect opportunities for customers to become smarter paper users and to reduce waste. It provides information on the impact of duplex printing or using different paper stocks.
For offices that want a quick assessment of their environmental footprint, a scaled-down version of the comprehensive calculator is on the Xerox Web site www.xerox.com/thoughtleadership.
