It’s a cliché to say that we never achieved the Paperless Office. But it’s also painfully clear that there are more reasons than ever to keep trying.

We all probably get reminded of this in various ways on a daily basis. But in the run up to #WPFD, or World Paper Free Day which is happening right across the globe very shortly on the 6th of November, we have some fresh reasons to encourage some creative thinking about how to end our reliance on the stuff:

• 83% of a group of information managers we just surveyed warn that business ‘at the speed of paper’ will simply be an insupportable concept in just a few years time
• The average space taken up in a business environment to store paper is coming down, yes… it was 15.3% of all your real estate in 2011 and it is now down to 13.5%. But that is still about a sixth of your entire business environment devoted to a dead medium!

Despite all our advances in utilisation of electronic and digital forms of content, use of paper is increasing in 21% of the companies we spoke to – as well as expanding as a component of central business processes in 25% of environments, too.The verdict is simple, stark even: though we have made real progress, we are still ‘addicted’ to paper in business.

That’s an addiction that has real consequences… as all addictions do, of course. Sure, paper is an industrial resource and we don’t harvest ancient woodland to produce it. But we are still consuming an alarming number of trees, even if commercially managed, to feed this addiction.

For example, at AIIM, we’ve calculated (using the paper industry’s own data) that if the whole world gave up paper for just one day, we could save around 821,918 tons of paper – and 11 million beautiful trees.So, we want it to. We want the world to go paper free for 24 hours… and we’d love to get your help making that happen. Let’s make these last few days of #WPFD really count!Hence, World Paper Free Day – our campaign to get folks to think about the consequences of all this dependence on paper.

We’re asking the members of the DMCollaborators’ community once again to help us spread the word on this. Are there customers and partners you know who could be persuaded to ‘take the one day paper-free pledge’ with us here: Even better, can you spot ways to think about business processes in your own environment that still have some paper clogging them up – something that just doesn’t make sense in our iPad/phablet/Blackberry z10 world?I know you guys have been great supporters of World Paper Free Day in previous years but especially in 2014, too. That’s wonderful, we really appreciate it!

But let’s finish this one with a bang and really get business people thinking about reducing paper in these last few days of the campaign. So join up, share the fascinating data and articles in the #WPFD social media channels, make it a conversation topic with your customers and peers. And why stop there? Is there a printer at home? Why do you still need it? How scrupulous are you being with your paper and cardboard domestic recycling… could you do just a little bit more? How you take part, if at all, in #WPFD is, of course, up to you. But I really do hope you do. As do those 11m trees!

Doug Miles works for AIIM, the global community of information professionals, which is the main organisation behind the World Paper Free Day campaign. At AIIM, Doug head up the Market Intelligence Division, bringing his 30-plus years of experience working with users and vendors across a broad spectrum of IT applications to help shape independent and useful research into fields including Mobile, Cloud, Social Business and Big DataCatch up with all the World Paper Free Day (#WPFD) activity by following it on these social media:

http://www.aiim.org/events/paper-free-day

Tell the world about it using @worldpaperfree and #WPFD

Twitter – https://www.twitter.com/worldpaperfree and #WPFD

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/worldpaperfreeday

Google Plus – https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/105682915438965916441/105682915438965916441/

LinkedIn (AIIM) – https://www.linkedin.com/groups/AIIM-Global-Community-Information-Professionals-3698

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/world-paper-free-day

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6HiCeUzR1w&list=PL-45J-ZRb29q-ilLapMRmCdxe_EJ6tvJb

There is still time to ‘take the pledge’ yourself and commit to having a Paper Free Day yourself for you and your team on November 6th! All you have to do is head on over to the main campaign site http://www.aiim.org/events/paper-free-day and follow the simple instructions. It should only take a couple of minutes.

You may also be interested to know that AIIM is going to make a make a donation in all signee’s behalf to The Arbor Day Foundation (http://www.arborday.org), a US based charity all about inspiring people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees.