Why Are People Still Printing in Business?

There’s a quiet paradox at play in modern offices: after a global shift to digital and hybrid work models, printing hasn’t entirely disappeared. In fact, despite a dramatic drop during the pandemic, and a slow decline even before that, businesses still print. But why?

The Pandemic as a Digital Catalyst

The COVID-19 pandemic forced organisations to question every assumption about how work gets done. Offices emptied. Printers fell silent. And yet, business carried on. In many ways, it became a large-scale experiment that proved the viability, and often superiority of digital-first workflows.

Document sharing platforms like Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace and SharePoint became vital infrastructure. Approvals and signatures moved to DocuSign or Adobe Sign. HR, finance and procurement departments embraced process automation platforms like Zapier, Power Automate and ServiceNow. Scanned inbound mail shifted to secure digital mailrooms. Suddenly, printing felt less like a need and more like a legacy habit.

What’s Still Being Printed, and Why?

And yet, in 2025, paper persists.

Some critical business processes still rely on print:

• Legal and compliance documents where hard copies are mandated.
• Healthcare records and prescriptions in certain contexts.
• Financial institutions printing for regulatory reporting or customer records.
• Manufacturing and logistics requiring physical labels, delivery notes or quality control sheets.
• Education and government still rooted in traditional, paper-based systems.

Even as digital transformation pushes forward, these operational pockets of “essential print” remain. And for some organisations, the question isn’t whether to eliminate print, but how to do it more thoughtfully.

ESG Pressure and the Evolving Print Conscience

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) priorities are becoming central to corporate decision-making. From boardrooms to bid processes, there’s increasing pressure to align with sustainability goals, not just in outputs, but in operations. Certifications like B Corp or ISO 14001 reflect this shift.

The reality is that printing is a messy business. Toner production, plastic casing, shipping logistics and e-waste all carry heavy carbon footprints. Manufacturing new printers and copiers isn’t environmentally benign, particularly when factoring in rare materials and energy intensive assembly processes.

This puts print in direct conflict with most ESG strategies. But for organisations with essential print needs, there is a path forward.

Let’s take a look at the stages to a smarter more sustainable way to print…

Stage 1

Knowledge: An essential first step in managing print is knowing who, what, where and when your people are printing and copying. Utilising data capture tools and analytics managed with Right Insight, provides the detail to compare, challenge and plan print management, reduction and colour to mono migration.

Stage 2

Blueprint: Work with your print partner and IT to establish the art of the possible, cross checking digital transformation plans against your medium term 5+ year IT software and hardware investment. Reducing print cost shifting spend to digitisation provides a cycle of improvement, assuming your print provider provides this level of flexibility.

Stage 3

Hardware: Assuming there is a clear understanding of the input and output requirements, we can now consider a balance between financial benefits and sustainable procurement, to suit the business demands. If your provider works with the global leaders such as Ricoh and Kyocera, then committing to long term rental of 7 or 8 years will reduce the impact of product manufacturing, in fact both vendors provide the ability to offset the Co2 impact of production.

In an ideal scenario we look to fully refurbished equipment as part of the RDS ReNu programme, reducing Co2 by 400kg when compared to a typical multifunctional office colour device.

A Smarter, Greener Way to Print

Organisations can still meet operational needs while supporting sustainability goals if they rethink the infrastructure of print itself.

• Refurbished and remanufactured devices offer a drastically lower environmental impact than new hardware. They extend product lifecycles, reduce e-waste and often come with carbon-saving credentials.
• Refilled or remanufactured toner and ink reduce dependency on fossil-fuel derived cartridges.
• Cloud print management tools and secure print release reduce unnecessary output and eliminate waste.
• Document automation and AI tools from OCR to Microsoft Copilot, help digitise and streamline workflows, reducing the number of touchpoints that once triggered a print job.
• Flexible rental models for refurbished devices improve cash flow and allow IT and procurement teams to align hardware costs with usage and lifecycle planning.

When combined, these shifts don’t just reduce environmental impact, they also reduce complexity, risk and cost. In this context, smarter printing isn’t just a sustainability initiative; it’s a sound operational strategy.

From Legacy to Leverage

The future of print in business isn’t binary. It’s not about printing vs. not printing, it’s about transitioning from wasteful legacy systems to intelligent, efficient, ESG-aligned practices.

At RDS, we believe in meeting businesses where they are: helping them retain essential capabilities, while moving toward a cleaner, more thoughtful future. It’s time to rethink print, not to discard it, but to redesign it.