The business case is growing for solution providers interested in addressing the environmental concerns of their customers

At a time when hybrid automobiles are becoming commonplace, and manufacturing executives go to Washington to push for tighter controls on greenhouse gases, printing and imaging solution providers may do well consider adding environmental expertise to their portfolios.

Applying green sensibilities to the printing infrastructure may not be a top priority for most customers, but hardware and software vendors say this area is gaining interest. The catalyst isn't solely environmental. Many end users are finding pragmatic financial incentives for going green.

The good news is that green printing requires changes primarily to messaging rather than a fundamental revision of business models. To workflow efficiency and security benefits add reduced paper consumption and lower consumables costs to the reasons why electronic document management systems make sense. "With electronic archiving and retrieval systems you can scan a document into an MFP [multifunction product]. Then you can route it electronically to the right people rather than printing three or four separate copies and hoping the right people will see it," says Scott Anderson, Hewlett-Packard's vice president of imaging and printing commercial channel sales.

Consumables management and recycling are strong reasons for end users to sign up for managed-services contracts. And solution providers may seal a tech-refresh deal by offering customers an environmentally friendly way to dispose of old printing-and-imaging hardware.

Hardware and software vendors are helping out with technologies that make it easy to address environmental concerns and costly waste.

Late last year start-up GreenPrint Technologies introduced a same-named application designed to help businesses reduce unnecessary output. When users hit the print command, a GreenPrint preview page appears that highlights sections or pages likely to end up as wasted print outs. This includes pages with Web page borders, short over runs of text, or boilerplate legal disclaimers. Users also have the option of making their own selections.

After users finalize their edits and continue with the print job, only the relevant pages move through the print queue. "There's a clear business case in terms of savings in paper, ink, and time," says Hayden Hamilton, GreenPoint founder.

He cites a study by Lexmark that looked at cross-industry printing practices and determined that a typical business user prints a total of 10,000 pages a year. Of these, 1100 a year, or six pages per day, are waste. "We extrapolated the numbers and estimated that business people generate about 80 billion wasted pages per year," Hamilton says.

He adds that comprehensive studies haven't determined how much ink and toner is wasted each year, but those areas also add unnecessary costs for businesses.

Although the company currently sells the software direct, Hamilton says he's exploring additional sales strategies and would welcome talks with solution providers.

The proprietary solid ink technology Xerox uses in its color printers and MFPs can also help solution providers deliver on green promises, says Mark Drum, the company's director of channel marketing for North American reseller sales. The ink "sticks" are non-toxic and because the technology doesn't rely on cartridges it produces 90 percent less waste than laser printing, according to Xerox.

Solution providers may not be able to build their practice solely around a green printing, but understanding this business trend from its cost-savings and environmental angle could be one more way to grow beyond straight hardware sales.