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Study highlights environmental benefits of going paperless

More attention has been drawn to the benefits of going paperless.

A new study has demonstrated the benefits that could be achieved if companies in the entertainment industry were to go paperless.

WeGotTickets carried out research and discovered that there are around 40 million entertainment tickets sold in the UK each year.

If all of these are posted out to buyers, it has the same environmental impact as a London bus circumnavigating the globe five times.

However, completely paperless ticketing – where people are simply sent a booking reference and perhaps a barcode to present at the venue using their smartphone – uses 100 times less energy.

Paperless tickets also had an advantage over the print-at-home variety, which produce around 40 times more carbon.

"This report resoundingly illustrates how a modern ticketing system would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 100-fold. It behoves the ticketing sector to make sure that paperless becomes the norm and that gig-goers are educated and encouraged to never print out an email confirmation again," said WeGotTickets founder Dave Newton .

Sustainability consultant Sam Chapman said he is pleased to see a greater emphasis being placed on environmental issues in the entertainment sector.

However, it is not just this industry that could benefit from being paperless. Insurer Lloyd’s of London recently revealed it is switching over to this system, while the government wants a paperless NHS by 2018.

Smaller businesses can also get in on the action – and Dajon Data Management can help by providing bespoke document scanning solutions.

Piles of paperwork such as legal documents can be converted into a variety of image formats including JPEG, TIFF and PDF, which can then be indexed and made searchable for easy access later on.

The advantages are numerous – for example, employees will not have to spend so much time rooting through paper to find the documents they need, offices will appear less cluttered and businesses will be able to show they are doing their bit for the environment.