Business Guide to Paper Reduction - Tufts Office of Sustainability

Establish a network of advisors and advocates.
Concurrently a network of advisors and advocates was being built. Because the County consists
of 27 diverse departments that may have little interaction between them, an advisory committee
was formed primarily from members of the departments that had been identified as top paper
users. This team met every one to two months to guide the program development, identify areas
that could be priorities, and ultimately implement the education program.
Identify opportunities for paper reduction.
People throughout the county identified ways to reduce paper consumption. Some projects, such
as increasing access to the County’s internal intranet, were a substantial undertaking, as only one
third of county employees had access when the initiative began. The Social Services Agency,
which uses numerous forms in its processes and has frequently-changing policies, began
assessing ways to reduce paper. Staff within the agency initiated several projects to support
moving from paper to electronic tracking of cases within the agency, with the potential of saving
vast amounts of storage space and storage costs. Many other agencies were involved in changing
from paper County forms to online form access. With funds designated through Measure D, the
County provided financial support of up to $15,000 to departments involved in such efforts.
Numerous individuals also made significant contributions to the campaign. One department
stopped distributing some reports and required people to walk down several flights to get the
report in order to discourage its use. One woman in the tax department reformatted the secured
property tax form and saved the county $27,000 and 5,500 pounds of paper. 84
Education. Education. Education.
While the County identified larger areas to focus on paper reduction, they also determined that
encouraging employee participation at an individual level was important in insuring the
program’s success. Realizing that it would be very difficult to reach all employees with an
advisory team of ten people, they adopted a train-the-trainers approach. They identified people in
each department that could take responsibility for implementing paper reduction efforts in their
own departments.
To facilitate this train-the-trainers approach, a full day training session was offered for all
department liaisons. This training included watching The Paper Trail, a 16-minute video that the
County produced. The video, which is available to the public at www.stopwaste.org, focuses on
educating employees about the inefficient uses of paper throughout the county and about steps
that were being or could be taken in the campaign. These staff trainers then went back to their
departments to present the video—which was required viewing for all county employees—using
an educational leaflet and list of talking points. Additionally, every employee was given paper
reduction guidelines that helped them understand specific actions that could be taken, and paper
re-use trays were put near printers for scrap paper.
Challenges:
In their initial audit, Alameda County found that the Social Services Agency was one of the
largest paper users. Strategically, it made sense to target this department for early paper
reduction efforts, yet they discovered two inherent challenges. First, the Social Services
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