Is BPM Green?

The “Green IT” hype is a great source of marketing opportunities and the chance to sell technology wrapped up in easily accessible feel-good language.
The Green Datacenter concept, the Green SOA concept – mainly hype.

BPM provides real “Green” benefits simply by replacing paper with electronic forms.
Not only is a paperless organisation more eco-friendly, but it also benefits in increased organisational efficiency, increased business visibility and savings.

Costs – cost of paper, cost of office storage space, cost of staff dealing with paper
Staff – reduces the number of employees dealing with paperwork and manual tasks
Visibility – audit trails – electronic forms enable you to have visibility over your processes. everything is stored in the database.
Compliance, legal and regulatory requirements – government regulations, legal requirements, lost documents, data security
Efficiency – Improves organisational efficiency, minimizes risks, enforces organisational policies.

Paper Statistics

(from the web, so please take with a pinch of salt)

UK

• UK uses 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard every year.
• On average, each person in the UK uses over 200 kg of paper per year.
• 80.6m tonnes of writing and printing paper enters the waste stream each year.
• To grow enough trees to provide the amount of paper that Britain uses each year, you would need a forest the size of Wales.
• Every tonne of biodegradable waste produces 300-500 cubic metres of landfill gas.

USA

• U.S. businesses use around 21 million tons of paper every year.
• On average, each person in the U.S. uses 650 pounds of paper a year.
• Every year, nearly 900,000,000 trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills.
• On average, every American, in one lifetime, uses: 18 ton of paper, 23 ton of wood, 16 ton of metal, and 32 ton of organic chemicals.
• America is home to 5% of the world’s population, yet it consumes a third of the Earth’s paper and timber, making paper the largest part of the waste stream at 37.5% of the total waste stream.
• It takes 24 trees to make 1 tonne of paper.
• Every tonne of paper recycled saves 17 trees.
• One tonne of paper from recycled pulp saves 17 trees, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 7,000 gallons of water, 390 gallons of oil, 4,200 kilowatt hours and prevents 60 pounds of air pollutants.