Printing Sustainability Practices



SUNY employees and authorized users should be mindful of the cost of printing and shall keep the usage of print and paper to an absolute minimum. See Procedure 6903 (System-wide Print Resource Use - Procedure) for the full text of the printing guidelines set by SUNY.

SUNY Policy

SUNY Policy 6902 (System-wide Print Resource Use - Policy) went into effect on March 1, 2021. This policy is to facilitate the appropriate and acceptable use of State University of New York print resources by SUNY employees (full- and part-time) and authorized individuals. The SUNY print objectives are to reduce cost, waste, print and paper, simplify and standardize the printer fleet (both single-function and multi-function printers), and secure and optimize the print environment.

Printing Sustainability Practices

These practices will help reduce the amount of printing our campus performs annually. It's important to recognize that even small changes add up quickly! Please use the Provide Feedback button to share new practices you develop as we develop sustainability mindsets.

Printer Defaults

CIT has configured campus devices with the following default settings.

  • Duplex (two-sided printing)

  • Mono (grayscale)

  • Require Geneseo credential authentication and secure job release

All printers must be on the campus network.

Paperless processes

The College will be making every effort to reduce the use of paper from its business processes.

Printing Alternatives

  • Share and distribute files electronically when possible.

  • Create PDFs from your documents to share with others

  • Sharing meeting materials and presentations

    1. Use conference room presentation technology, web conferencing, or document sharing repositories whenever possible.

    2. Send the information (pre-reads) out ahead of time in electronic format.

    3. Encourage and remind attendees not to print the materials and inform them you will be displaying the information using presentation technology.

Print

  • Only College business documents that require printing. Personal printing is prohibited. 

  • Only what is needed and necessary (use print preview to review prior to actually printing).

  • At the Duplication Center in Welles if total pages exceed 100 pages.

  • Using duplex settings.

  • Using “Shrink to Fit” or “Shrink to One Page”.

  • Avoid more expensive color printing.

  • If you must print materials or presentations for meetings:

    1. Use the 'Handouts' layout with 2, 3 or 4 slides per page which provide room for notes.

    2. Print multiple slides per page.

    3. Make use of duplex.

Modifying In-class Activities 

I used to do this

Here's how we do it without printing

I used to do this

Here's how we do it without printing

Paper exams

Peer review of writing samples during class

Printed Essays

Paper Handouts

  • Digitize paper with smart phone apps (Adobe, Scanbot, Genius Scan, etc.)

  • Scan-to-email on Toshiba MFDs

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