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Fax Machines in the Digital Age: A Sustainable Choice for Businesses

Diandra Mooren | Updated On December 21, 2023

Faxing has long been a popular method of communication and make the business future ready. Why? Because it’s user-friendly, reliable, and secure. However, traditional faxing often generates significant waste. 

In any case, fax machines are harmful to the environment, but there are alternative solutions. They transfer everything into electronic form, which means there is practically no environmental impact. 

In the digital age, when everything is integrated online, advanced fax machines still produce quality work along with safety features. It is utilized for managing official records, send confidential information, and for print-on-demand facilities as well. 

Let’s explore a sustainable approach to business communication through fax in the digital age.

How does Landline Fax Affect the Environment?

Fax contributes to massive deforestation due to their high paper consumption. In the United States alone, fax machines consume over 200 billion pages of paper each year. This excessive paper usage likely leads to the plundering and destruction of millions of trees annually.

Moreover, the noise generated by these machines can hurt workers’ productivity. They contribute to the emission of greenhouse gasses as they need to remain powered on continuously. 

These devices also consume a significant amount of energy and often require alternative power sources, such as generators, which can further contribute to environmental pollution and carbon emissions. 

Moreover, the ink used in faxing contains volatile organic compounds that can potentially degrade indoor air quality and pose health risks in poorly ventilated environments. 

DO YOU KNOW?
Faxing is often considered a more secure form of communication than email because it’s harder to hack into it than into an email account.

How to Achieve Sustainable Communication Using Fax?

Today’s modern landscape offers a convenient alternative to traditional fax devices powered by the internet. You can now transform your mobile phone, tablet, or computer into a portable faxing device without the need for a dedicated tool. 

To organize a paperless office, you need a fax app. If you are looking for the best app for faxing from iPhone, then here it is. By going digital, the copy of documents becomes unnecessary, unless it is for specific official work. 

The advanced feature of digitized fax is that it prints with speed without compromising on quality. They have two sizes 8.5 and 10.1 inches wide with a paper cutter. You can also use the auto-dialing option to schedule a document on a future date when the telephone rates are the lowest. 

This cutting-edge technology not only reduces the environmental impact but also enhances your organization’s mobility and efficiency. Moreover, it helps minimize expenses by eliminating the need for excessive spending on paper, ink, and toner. 

Digitization offers numerous opportunities to transform paper-intensive processes, resulting in savings of paper and ink resources.

According to Quocirca’s MPS and Digitisation Report, 61% of surveyed IT decision-makers have accelerated their efforts to digitize paper-based processes. Of these, 46% anticipate a decline in print volumes by 2025.

By digitizing documents and paper-intensive processes, such as invoicing, and leveraging scanning and capture technologies, you can reduce print requirements and associated consumables. 

Managing multiple folders becomes easier with storing huge data on a hard drive. It is most beneficial for businesses with large inventories. Understanding budgeting also becomes convenient for reevaluating information which also reduces the chances of errors. 

Moreover, this approach enhances operational efficiency, lowers storage costs, and enables quick access to timely and relevant information.

Consider utilizing duplex printing if you still require physical document copies. It’s a simple yet effective method to reduce environmental impact while printing documents. 

Duplex printing involves printing on both sides of the paper, reducing its usage by approximately 50%. This approach is particularly valuable for producing multiple-page fax documents.

To ensure optimal utilization of duplex printing, make sure to adjust the settings accordingly. Most modern printers support this feature, which can be easily enabled for multiple uses like the print-on-demand feature.

The graph below shows the type, application, distribution channels, and enterprise size of the global fax machine market. It also predicts a constant demand for these products till 2031. 

Printing with recycled paper can significantly decrease your environmental impact.

It conserves approximately 73% of energy, and 80% of water, and reduces CO2 emissions by 40% compared to non-recycled production. 

Many organizations already adopt this practice, like Konica Minolta, which predominantly uses recycled paper for their office printers at their European Headquarters in Germany. 

If complete recycling is not easily accessible in your area, consider looking for alternatives like EU Ecolabel Paper or FSC-certified paper that are eco-friendly.

Traditional methods contribute to the consumption of large volumes of paper. 

To take a step towards being more environmentally friendly, it is recommended to audit the rest of your process and identify aspects that rely on paper. 

Encouraging online workflows is vital in reducing paper usage and minimizing the environmental impact of faxing. 

Adopting electronic signatures and sharing documents digitally can significantly reduce its usage and promote sustainable practices.

Konica Minolta’s Enabling Climate Compensation program offers compensation for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that result from the life cycle (sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal) of printing devices. 

This program, in partnership with ClimatePartner, supports projects that aim to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. 

By contributing to these projects, Konica Minolta fights against global warming caused by the significant GHG emissions produced by burning fuel to generate electricity. 

Although print provision causes unavoidable emissions, supporting climate protection projects helps offset its environmental impact.

Conclusion

It’s not just from an environmental perspective that it makes sense to switch to a paperless office model. It’s simply a more efficient and convenient approach.

Businesses benefit from savings on ink, toners, and paper, employees benefit from a healthier office environment, and the environment is taken care of. This approach benefits everyone.