A lot of us are doing ‘Stoptober’ things this month. If you don’t know, Stoptober is a UK Public Health campaign that challenges smokers to give up cigarettes for 28 days, the idea being that after abstaining for this period of time, they are five times more likely to quit smoking permanently.
Some people are taking the opportunity to cut down on other things as well – I know one character who has vowed to keep the television off for four whole weeks! But you don’t need to sacrifice quite that hard in November. All I want you to do is to join me in giving up paper – for precisely one day.
Here in the ECM/DM community, we pride ourselves on promoting the paper-free, or at least ‘paper-lite’, way of working. But as anyone who ever believed in the famous Xerox 1970s vision of the ‘paperless office’ will tell you, doing without paper at all is really quite hard.
For example, you may have cut out paper invoices and expense reports in the office, only to be handed endless paper from your bank, insurance company, or local shop.
I mean, after all, if we had got rid of paper, why are councils (2012 figures) having to cope with 8.1m tons of the stuff every year in their recycling centres?
This is one we can all get behind – firms, customers, Mrs Goggins
We think that we have a long way to go before we really get a grip on our paper ‘addiction.’
Hence ‘World Paper Free Day’ – a fantastic campaign I think everyone in the DM world should get behind, not just vendors but your customers.
Brief history lesson: World Paper Free Day – and let’s take our own medicine and ‘recycle’ that down to the hashtag we want to see everywhere, #WPFD – has been going for a couple of years, but this year we really want to make it have the impact it deserves.
What do we want from you? Just three easy steps:
- mark Thursday, November 6 in your calendar now, please
- go to http://www.aiim.org/events/paper-free-day and ‘sign up.’ All that means is that you will commit, on that one day, to use as few dead trees as you possibly can. One day. Got it?
- tell us why you’re doing this. Green agenda? Fantastic. Corporate Social Responsibility? More the merrier. Sick of filling your purse with scraps of paper/endless receipts that you then put in the council cardboard box? With you, sister!
Doesn’t matter – just say what drives you nuts about all this PAPER still everywhere!
Then we’ll give you a neat little digital ‘badge’ to put on your website, use in your emails, on communications – whatever you need. This is a thank you from us but also a way to spread the word… in a paper-free way! (See what I did there?)
End the addiction!
Nearly ready to let you go (though expect more from us on the DMCollaborators’ space about this really important campaign): if you feel like it, join the fun on social media.
Head on over to @WorldPaperFreeDay on Twitter and sign up – let us know you’ve done it and why.
Track what other folks are doing to promote the cause and focus attention on November 6th… we promise we won’t bite, we’re quite a friendly bunch and there’s hardly a granola bar in sight!
And you know why? Because we need to cut back on paper use. Seriously.
If you agree, the route forward’s clear: join us in making November 6th 2014 World Paper Free Day!
See you there – and please, please sign up on the AIIM website today. Then Tweet @WorldPaperFree and tell us!
By Peggy Winton, Vice President and CMO, AIIM
The DM Collaborators 