Understanding The Environmental Impact of Paper

Join the paperless initiative: digitally transform your business while reducing its impact on the environment

Tons upon tons of paper is produced every day, with thousands of trees cut down in the process. Although this process is nothing new, what might surprise many is the significant environmental impact that paper has on our planet. Professor Benjamin Sovacool of Aarhus University in Denmark states that there will be no water by 2040 if we maintain our current reliance on paper – resulting in a severe water shortage in less than 20 years that will impact the entire planet. 

To reiterate the impact of paper on the environment, here are some basic stats:

10 liters of water = 1 sheet of paper

1 tree = 8,333 sheets of paper

10 x 8,333 = 83,330 liters of water

83,330 liters of water/3.78541(1 gallon) 

1 tree = 22,013.47(gallons) 

GoFormz saved 11,215 trees 

22,013.47(gallons of water per tree) x 11,215(trees) = 246,881,037.98

GoFormz saved 246,881,037.98 gallons of water used to produce 11,215 trees worth of paper 

246,881,037.98 gallons of water = 374 Olympic swimming pools

So what do these stats tell us? By digitizing your daily operations and eliminating paper usage from your day-to-day workflows, your business can reduce its environmental impact while modernizing its documentation. 

Digital forms provide an easy, cost-effective means of capturing data and automating workflows to streamline data collection, form routing, record-keeping, and much more. Your digital form templates can look exactly like your traditional paper forms, requiring no IT support or code – resulting in a simplified onboarding experience for new users. 

Additionally, digital forms provide companies the opportunity to capture new data types like Images, Sketches, GPS, and more, while also having the ability to integrate with business applications through powerful API integration capabilities. With this capability, mobile forms can even be generated and pre-filled with a user’s information to expedite form completion and reduce opportunities for human error.

All in all, digital forms not only provide teams with greater insights and visibility into workplace productivity and efficiency but also takes positive strides towards helping our planets. To learn more about how the GoFormz platform can help improve your workplace productivity and have a positive impact on the environment, check out these three ways to accelerate your paperless initiative or check out the covert costs of paper to better understand the hidden costs of using paper in your daily workflows.