How many times do you print more than you really need?

We all need to print emails and other documents but we do not always need to read everything which is printed. Straggling pages are wasteful, unnecessary images are also a problem. Don’t even get me started on the environment (I discovered on the GreenPrint website just a single 500 sheet ream of paper uses up 6% of a tree). Surely, it would be useful to be able to identify and remove unnecessary or wasteful pages and images prior to printing? What we really need is a method of printing greener…

GreenPrint is a software program which gives you much more control over what you print. There are two versions available for home use: a basic version called World which is free to download, but you can also upgrade to a more comprehensive home premium version. The home premium version adds additional functionality including quick-loading preview, advertising free preview, and more frequent updates. More details of this and the business version (Enterprise) are available at http://www.printgreener.com. You can see the feature comparison at http://www.printgreener.com/producthp.html.

No matter which version of GreenPrint you use, the aims are the same “…saving paper, ink, money and millions of trees.” – GreenPrint also includes a simple, impactful, report to show the difference you are making by printing greener.

 

GreenPrint World is a free application which will help you limit the amount of printing you do. It can be used on Windows 2000, XP and Vista. A version supporting Apple OS X version 10.5+ is also available as a 30 day free trial.

You can look forward to these features when you use GreenPrint:

• You can have control over what you do and do not print
• Enjoy using the PDF Writer contained within the software itself
• Make your paper last longer
• Buy ink and toner less often
• Reduce the amount of paperwork you need and use
• Track your savings and your impact on the environment

GreenPrint also allows you to monitor how much paper you are saving, as well as the related costs. This is a particularly handy feature as it gives visual feedback showing the contribution you are making to helping the environment (as well as saving you money).

You can download GreenPrint at http://www.printgreener.com. If you access the World Edition via the products tab, you will see the download button on the right hand side of the page. You can view the GreenPrint tutorial at http://www.printgreener.com/tutorial.html.

Once installed GreenPrint effectively becomes your default printer  but you can assign a printer for GreenPrint to use as default. You can change this association at any time.

GreenPrint sits in your taskbar waiting for a print job. You can also right click on its icon to configure various options including configuration, obtaining a report, and re-installing GreenPrint. Single clicking will show a quick toolbar tip with paper and money saved so far.

  – The GreenPrint application sitting in the Taskbar.

   – Tooltip showing a quick summary

When you print you will be shown the GreenPrint printer device – selecting Print at this stage will launch the GreenPrint interface.

The GreenPrint interface sits between the application and the printer, capturing all output and allowing you to make choices based on the anticipated output. You can choose to exclude whole pages, all images, or selected sections of text and images. The pages you have excluded immediately highlight in red as a handy visual indicator.

The system can also be configured to intelligently detect potentially wasteful areas include:

• Completely blank pages
• Pages with just header and footer
• Pages with single line of text or a customisable number of lines of text
• Pages with only images
• Pages more than a customisable percentage blank
• You can also ensure Duplex printing is enforced

I have been using GreenPrint for a while now and the savings are really starting to stack up. To instantly see the savings I am making and the impact I am having by making more informed choices of what I print are really helpful to keep me motivated in using the product. If this keeps up I may even look at the Enterprise version of the product for use at work.

For future versions it would be great to be able cut and paste areas of page so a straggling, but essential, paragraph from one page could be pasted onto a whitespace area of another essential page (or automatically shifted across). The ability to shrink a number of pages onto one page would also be welcome.

You can learn more about GreenPrint World and GreenPrint Mac at http://www.printgreener.com/.

You can also see a demo of GreenPrint at http://www.printgreener.com/tutorial.html.

If you enjoy GreenPrint and are concerned about Green IT issues we have a Green IT Awareness Poster with some useful, and quick, things everyone can do to make our IT experience a little greener.

Still unconvinced? GreenPrint also have a useful Paper Facts section at http://www.printgreener.com/earthday.html which should sway you.