The Paperless Home Office

2008_02_12 paperless office.jpg While we are trying to use as little paper as possible in our home office, the reality is that we are not quite there yet. Is it really possible to go completely paperless?

For us the answer is yes, but not easily. The NY times reports about Chris Uhlik, an engineering director at Google who has taken his family paperless by gradually scanning all his reference books and dealing with lists, letters and calendars all digitally. The end result is the ability to search everything without having to physically shuffle through papers. Also, if sitting around for days on end scanning your photos and other documents is not something that you are particularly interested in, companies like Scan Cafe will do it for you. The paperless home office is now within reach , you just make sure that you have a plan to back up all this data if you go down this route.

-via The New York Times

Originally posted by Ryan on Unplggd.

Comments (2)

the maintenance of those digital documents, and yes they require quite a bit of maintenance if you wish for them to be retrievable in 5 years, requires quite a bit of energy. it may be convenient, but it is not green.

I think the answer is to increasingly push for companies to correspond electronically. This is definitely happening over time, but there are some instances where it is still not possible. One example is that government legislation here requires some types of documents, e.g. share issue notes, to be sent via postal mail. Like other environmental issues, this requires a progressive government to regulate in such a way that there is increasingly an economic imperative to transitioning to a greener way of doing things.