Why Are We Still Printing?

As we cautiously returned to campus for the in-person fall 2021 semester, requests for printer connections began to pour in. After being away for 18 months, people had new personal or work devices in their hands, eager to start printing documents again that they only wished they could while at home. Ink had dried up, printers suffered tantrums from being idle, and paper curled from humidity. As the world transforms to a digital society and we grow greener, we should be breaking the mold as higher education institutions and embracing the power we have at our fingertips. By reducing or eliminating our printing use, we work toward our social environmental accountability, and cost savings on paper, toner, and time. We proved over those 18 months that colleagues and students were able to adapt to working without being tied to a printer while we were away from campus. Let’s stop and think for a moment: Does every employee need a printer in their office? Do students need to print work that is stored in the cloud or emailed to their professors? Do we truly need an overabundance of printers?