Optimisation of the ETH printer landscape - our contribution to sustainability
We aim for our printer landscape to be sustainable and cost-efficient. Currently, around 1800 trees are used up by printing at ETH every year and 80 tons of greenhouse gas emissions are emitted. It is interesting to note that a personal printer has a three times greater impact on the environment than an infrastructure printer. Therefore, it is time to act!
As of July 2023, 930 printers were available to our employees and 70 to our students. Of these, around 700 are central printers and around 300 are personal printers located in offices. Over the last five years, we have seen a continuous decrease in print volume of around 45%.
Why is it important to optimise our printer landscape now?
ETH Zurich prints around 18 million DIN A4 pages per year, which is the equivalent of 1800 trees. But it is not only the paper that is crucial, but also the used toner and the devices themselves. The production of the paper alone causes around 80 tons of CO2 emissions, and the toner is additionally responsible for the emission of plenty of fine dust. These parameters can be greatly improved by redimensioning our printer landscape, which in turn contributes to the goals of a climate-friendly ETH and to ETH's CO2 reduction efforts (see "ETH Net Zero").
Can we continue to print efficiently despite the optimisation?
Yes, we can! An analysis of our printing behaviour shows that a large part of the printers are only rarely used - also due to the increasing trend towards mobile working. There, we have long since become accustomed to working largely digitally. And even if we halved the number of our printing devices, all employees and students would still have enough devices within reasonable reach.
Which concrete measures are we implementing?
The IT Services department have set the following two packages of measures as their goal:
- Reduce the number of central printers (infrastructure printers) by one third by the end of 2023.
- Reduce the number of personal printers (rental and additional devices) by half by the end of 2023.
From 2024 onwards, we will levy an annual CO2 neutralisation fee on personal printers as an incentive to promote the use of central printers and reduce the number of personal printers. This measure supports the CO2 reduction goals of "ETH Net Zero", which aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The use of the funds from the CO2 neutralisation fee (see external pageslide set (in German) for further details) will be coordinated with the ETH Sustainability Office.
The response to these measures has been good so far. Thanks to the intensive cooperation of the IT managers in the departments and the central administrative units, one fifth of the users of private printers have already agreed to let go of them in the future. Around 15% of the central printers have also already been identified for reduction. We have not quite reached our goals yet, but we are well on our way. Help us to optimise the ETH printer landscape!
Are you also interested in making your contribution? You can find more information and contact details on our external pagenews channel on SharePoint.
Reference [Impact of infrastructure printers compared with personal printers]: external pageUniversität Zürich, Factsheet Mediennutzung, 02.07.2018
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