Thaindian News

By T.G. Biju
New Delhi, March 31 (IANS) Indian bureaucracy, slow to change, finally seems to be waking up to the concerns of the environment and the costs of unthinking wastage of paper and other precious office resources.

A circular issued by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAC), an important wing of the agriculture ministry, speaks about the spiralling environmental cost of using paper and the optimisation of printing costs in offices.

“You may like to pause and ponder on the following two issues,” says the first sentence of the circular issued to all divisional heads and special and additional secretaries in DAC.

The circular issued by Sanjeev Gupta, joint secretary (IT, Extension and Policy), pointed out the environmental cost of using paper in DAC in a year.

“More than 15,000 reams of 70 GSM paper have been procured this year for the DAC offices located in Krishi Bhawan. Assuming that pine trees with a height of 15 metres and an average diameter of 30 centimetres were used to create pulp for manufacturing paper being procured in DAC, it requires felling of about 110 such trees every year!” says the circular.

“This number will be much higher if all subordinate and attached offices and note sheets are also included,” it says.

“We can definitely bring down the number of trees being cut on account of paper used in the DAC and subordinate offices. This can be done by sending emails or sharing folders (in a password protected manner) over the Local Area Network in DAC,” Gupta said in the circular issued March 19.

“Once you start getting used to electronic forms of documents, you will find it extremely convenient and efficient,” Gupta reminded fellow officials.

The circular also suggests what can be done to optimise printing costs.

“The laser printers available in DAC so far have a cost of printing (A4 size with five percent coverage) of up to Rs.1.80 per page in draft mode.”

The suggestion to reduce cost includes use of PDF versions of documents and saving the same on computer and digital photocopiers which has a lower cost of printing (about 0.35 paisa per page).

The IT division has also procured some duplex printers with an average cost of Rs.0.86 per page in draft mode.

“These printers should be used as far as possible.”

“This circular should have ideally been emailed instead of printing it but then it has to be ensured that everyone reads it and saves more paper and toner in the future,” says the circular.

(T.G. Biju can be contacted at biju.t@ians.in)