Sustainable goals: No paper to waste!
An organisation without paper documents is a long way off for many people. We struggle to manage the many of data generated, sent and received every day. Our Customer Service department has therefore set up an offensive: ‘No paper to waste’.
Sustainability is actively spread throughout every level of our company. Everyone feels very strongly about Corporate Social Responsibility and the cradle to cradle principle. “But there is always room for improvement!” thought Loes Radermacher and Ralf Peters in the Customer Service department. Therefore they decided to work on a plan to drastically reduce the amount of paper used internally. And if the oil stain principle works, our clients will also be using less paper within a short space of time.
Loes and Ralf named their project: Mission (Im)possible – No paper to waste. The aim is to put as much as possible in the trust of the SAP computer system and at the same time to minimise the use of paper. In practice this means printing less, faxing less and file less. “In the beginning we weren´t sure that we would succeed, not everyone responded very favourably to start with’, recalls Ralf. “We humans are animals of habit and prefer to stick to what we know. But the reactions gradually became more and more positive, both internally and externally.”
Last March Loes and Ralf presented the project to our staff. All active clients were also approached with friendly E-mails. “We asked clients, among other things, to send orders via the E-mail”, explains Ralf. “We also asked them whether we may send one invoice instead of two wherever possible.” In practice, communicating via E-mail appears to be faster and less distracting than via the telephone. E-mail also avoids mistakes in the address easily and saves a lot of walking back and forth to the fax machine.
The project will be evaluated at the end of August. “Our short-term objectives are to have 50% of our clients ordering by E-mail and to invoice 50% of our Dutch clients by E-mail”, says Ralf.
We're not there yet. The number of E-mail orders is increasing, but many clients still prefer to receive their invoices by post, even though e-mailed invoices are legally permitted in the Netherlands. Ralf is nevertheless satisfied with the provisional results. “We are happy that our initiative for a paper-free office has been received so well. What I would like to say to our clients is: don't hesitate to contact us, and find out how you can help to make our mission possible.”