PERSONAL TECH

BACK IN the mid-1970s, the term paperless office emerged as the latest buzzword.

Some 40 years later, that reality has failed to emerge with paper still playing a role in most businesses.

The statistics are depressing. According to Forrester Research, each day, one billion photocopies are made and Gartner reports the annual growth rate for the amount of paper produced by the average company is 25 per cent.

So while it looks like paperless perfection will probably never be reached there are plenty of ways to reduce the clutter on your desk and contribute to saving the planet.

Embrace Google Docs or Apple’s Pages as a place to both share documents and store them. Several people can work on a document at once and everyone can access them anywhere on any device.

While words do look better on paper, try to resist the temptation to print off a 100-page document to read in the cafe while having a latte – take your tablet instead.

When you access a document while out of the office, try one of the many PDF scanners for phones. Genius Scan (free for Android and Apple) is one of the better ones that lets you scan any piece of paper and turns it into a PDF. You can then share it with colleagues or store it to read later.

Another curse of modern business are receipts. A handy app is OneReceipt (free for Android and Apple) which lets you scan them in using your phone and collates them with those emailed to you.

While paperless may be too hard to crack, at least you may be able to reduce your paper footprint.