Companies looking to cut down on costs and boost their eco credentials by using less paper in the office should offer incentives to help achieve this.

According to Raz Godelnik, co-founder of Ecolibris.net, a company working to promote the adoption of green practices within the book industry, employees are more likely to try and cut down on their paper usage if there is something in it for them.

“Many times you see companies that save a lot of money but they save a lot of money because the employees are taking these steps. It’s good if you can share these savings, whether it’s through bonuses or launching some sort of competition between teams,” Mr Godelnik said.

He added that these incentives don’t have to be worth a lot of money, they simply have to make people feel like they’re part of the result as well as the effort.

Good ways to encourage staff to use less paper are to have whiteboards for writing notes and to have easily accessible copies of important documents online so they don’t need printing off.