Legal & General Adopts Sustainable Printing Plan

UK financial services company Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) claims it has improved the sustainability of its business by cutting back on the number of printers, faxes and copiers in its offices.

The company recently moved to a new London office and opted to use the opportunity to examine how it could improve the sustainability of some of its IT systems, and address the sprawl of printing devices it had accumulated. “We needed to balance high quality printing, scanning and copying with a substantial reduction in waste and energy use,” explained Graham Precey, head of corporate social responsibility, Legal & General Group.

According to environmental charity Global Action Plan, more than 120 billion sheets of paper are printed every year which generates around 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 – a figure that doesn’t include the carbon generated by the manufacture of ink, or printers. Figures from analyst Gartner show that around 178 million printers, copiers and multi-function devices were shipped in 2007.

Rather than trying to manage devices from multiple vendors, LGIM decided to put all its printing eggs in one basket and purchase multifunction devices – Xerox’ WorkCentre 7245 and 4150.

LGIM claims the multifunction devices mean it has been able to cut the number of printing and scanning devices in its offices from 150 to 50.

The company is also adopted printing management technologies from Xerox including Equitrac which the IT vendor claims can be used to analyse and manage the cost of every print job.

LGIM claims its commitment to sustainable business allowed it to achieve ISO14001 accreditation – awarded for implementing strong environmental controls. “As a company we believe in understanding our environmental impact and then reducing it year on year,” said Precey.