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Is your school spending too much money on printing? It’s thought that schools are some of the biggest consumers of paper and printer ink. Fortunately, printing doesn’t have to be a big expense and there are lots of ways to save money. Here are several ways in which you can cut printing costs in your school/class.
Source printing supplies online
Paper and ink costs can soon add up if you’re not taking the time to shop around. Being selective about where you shop for these supplies can make a big impact – most general school suppliers will charge a premium. Sites like 123inkjets.com.au offer great deals on supplies, as well as the option of collecting points that you can then spend to get free printing supplies. Even with the added cost of delivery, you could make big savings compared to buying these supplies elsewhere.
Try refillable ink
Refillable ink cartridges can be another way to save money. You simply buy ink and can then refill each cartridge once it runs out. Refillable ink cartridges can only be refilled a certain amount of times, so bear this in mind. Some people also find that they affect print quality – especially with colors – so you may want to limit using these for black and white documents.
Bring in printing quotas
Giving each pupil a printing quota can also help to reduce costs by reducing the number of unnecessary documents printed off. This could be a quota per class or a quota for the entire year’s work. Going over this quota could result in pupils having to pay. This can be a very effective way of reducing printing costs but needs to be strictly enforced.
Start accepting hand-ins digitally
Rather than getting pupils to print off work, you could also start encouraging people to hand in work digitally. This can help to reserve paper and ink. Free apps like Showbie make handing in work online easy – you can mark and annotate work just as if you were marking it with a pen. Some schools set up their work portals for handing in assignments online, however, this may cost more to set up.
Unplug printers when not in use
Aside from ink and paper, printers can also use up a lot of power. Make it a habit of unplugging your school printers at the end of each day when they are no longer needed for use. This is particularly important with older printers, which are likely to be less energy efficient (when upgrading printers, it’s worth looking into energy efficiency – you can usually find product energy star ratings online).
