10 tips on how to reduce printing costs and paper consumption in schools

At present, from an economic point of view, all schools are trying to find ways to save money without compromising educational standards. Material resources are naturally the first place where opportunities to save money are sought. Up to 1 million sheets of paper are used annually by a single school (copying not included). How to prevent it?We will present you with 10 ways to solve this problem!




1) Choose an economical printer

It is easy to choose printers based on manufacturers' claims about speed and quality, but if you want to reduce costs, you need to consider other features. First, you need to investigate how expensive it is to replace the ink cartridges and whether high-capacity versions are available. Standard cartridges may cost less when it comes to initial costs. But high-capacity cartridges allow you to print more pages, and for schools where a large volume of printing will be required daily, high-capacity cartridges can also be about 30% cheaper. Does it have to be color, or is a black-and-white printer sufficient? These are not only cheaper to purchase, but they will also save you money when it comes to replacing ink cartridges. Besides that, how energy-efficient is the printer? A printer with lower energy consumption will save your school money on electricity bills.

More advice on choosing the right printer for your printing needs can be found in our article - How to best choose a printer for home and office?

2) Compare the quality of the paper with the quality of the document

Strong, high-quality papers for inkjet and laser printers are great when you need to make an impression, but their everyday use is not cost-effective. Paper is supplied in various qualities, usually from 60 g/m2 to 160 g/m2. Although 60 g/m2 paper will not provide results as crisp as higher-grade papers, it is entirely sufficient for most everyday printing in schools, and purchasing it is much cheaper. From a research perspective, switching to 60 g/m2 instead of 100 g/m2 for everyday use is more worthwhile, which can save you 47% on paper costs. 

3) Print access settings

Setting up individual user profiles on a school computer is a great idea if you want to save money. Since each teacher and student will have to log in individually, administrators will be able to identify the main culprits who are printing too quickly! Nowadays, much of the management software that schools use also makes it possible to limit the amount that an individual or group can print. Raising awareness that unlimited printing resources are not available will reduce waste, as all users will carefully check their documents for errors before printing. Teachers can also monitor students' printing activity by allowing or denying printer access to certain classes or individuals.

4) Always check the print preview first

Print preview is an effective and often underused tool for saving money. It shows you exactly how the document will look when printed, making it easier to select only the parts you need to print rather than the entire document if you do not actually need it. For example, if you print source material directly from a website, this will allow you to check whether you will be printing blank pages with only the web address at the bottom! It also allows you to determine whether you really need color in the printed version, or whether black and white will suffice.

5) Considering digital prepress

With today's advances in digital technology, paper consumption is not what it used to be in the past. Encouraging students to switch to digital media can significantly reduce paper consumption and printing costs. Among the ways to achieve this are:

• Allow students to send their messages and assignments by email instead of submitting them on paper. Teachers can then mark it online and send it back by email, completely eliminating the need for printing
• New technologies, such as cloud storage, can be a great solution, especially for group projects, as they allow documents to be stored and shared among multiple users online. All users with permission can then edit documents on their computers without the need to use paper

6) Print double-sided

Almost all of today’s printers have a Duplex setting that allows printing on both sides of the paper. Although it may not be suitable for all documents, such as letters, for everyday printing in the classroom it is a simple and effective way to save money, because if used for most documents, it can reduce your paper costs by almost 50%. Setting all printers to Duplex as the default setting is easy, won’t take long, and can save your school a lot of money. It is also worth saving paper that has previously been printed on one side and is no longer needed, because the reverse side can be used as writing paper.

7) Print multiple pages on one sheet

Most software packages, including Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, have a setting that allows you to place two or even four pages of text on a single sheet of paper. Activating this setting can double print savings or more, while the text remains readable. If you use a lot of slides from PowerPoint in class and print them as handouts for students, choose the option - I want to print as handouts instead of slides. This will automatically print six slides per page instead of one. This simple change, combined with double-sided printing, can lead to savings of up to 92% in paper consumption.

8) Reduce the font size

Reducing the font size you use for documents is a very simple way to save your school money, because naturally, the smaller the font, the less paper and ink it uses. Switching from twelve-point type to ten-point will make a surprising difference, while still remaining perfectly readable. It is also worth considering which font you use as the default. Some fonts, due to their thickness, consume more ink and paper than others. The most economical font is Times New Roman, which on average produces 44% more prints from an ink cartridge than Verdana. Century Gothic also performed well, using less ink than Times New Roman, but its wide letters mean that it uses more paper, so overall Times New Roman was the best choice.


9) Printing in draft mode

Setting printers to draft mode as the default setting will significantly reduce ink consumption without noticeably reducing the appearance of basic documents. Automatically reduces the resolution at which it prints documents to 300 dpi, which is entirely sufficient for everyday printing in the classroom. The name varies by manufacturer – it may be called “Toner Save” or “Save,” but you will usually find it on the “Paper/Quality” tab in the “Properties” section of the printer settings. Another bonus of printing in draft mode is that it can also increase printing speed!


10) Print in black and white

Do you really need your document printed in color, or is black and white sufficient? Color printing can cost up to 10 times more than black-and-white printing because color cartridges are more expensive than black ones. To save the maximum amount of money, it is worth setting the printer to print everything in black and white.


Denisa from CDRmarket.