University of Groningen opts for climate-neutral printing

As part of its drive to become more sustainable, the University of Groningen has chosen to participate in Ricoh’s Carbon Balanced Printing programme. This programme analyses the current impact of printing activities and implements improvements to lessen the impact and to compensate it in full. The University hopes to decrease its printing-related CO₂ emissions by 40%.

Tjeerd-Willem Hobma, director of the University’s Centre for Information Technology: ‘Sustainability is an important issue within the University. Our collaboration with Ricoh allows us to tackle this head on. By intensively informing and involving students and staff, all parties become actively engaged in reducing CO₂ emissions. Energy-efficient printers are being used and we are saving 16 million sheets of paper on an annual basis. Although this is fantastic, there’s still the inescapable residual CO₂ emissions to deal with. We are now compensating these with UN-certified carbon credits, which means the University printing needs are totally climate neutral. This is a great result and really encourages us to look at further possibilities to make our organization even more sustainable.’

Sustainable business practices

Maurice Janssen Duijghuijsen, Client Director at Ricoh Nederland: ‘We’re very proud to have been able to help the University of Groningen achieve climate-neutral printing. Our organization has made the top 10 list of most sustainable organizations in the world for the last ten years in a row, and we always support our clients as best we can in sustainable business practices. The University of Groningen is a good case in point, where over 75% of documents are printed double-sided, saving the University EUR 100,000 a year.’