Today, schools are still using enormous amounts of paper on a daily basis for a variety of reasons, including homework assignments, tests, and resource handouts as just a few examples. While these papers are often a valuable resource for students, there is an overconsumption of paper throughout schools.
According to an American survey, a typical teacher uses anywhere from 25-75 pieces of paper every day. With the amount of schools and teachers nationwide, this is a lot of paper being used regularly.
Cost of Paper for Schools
Schools use a lot of paper in just one day—a single teacher typically uses between 25–75 pages every day for handing out tests, homework, and resources to students.
Besides the high paper consumption numbers, the cost of the paper itself is also steep, making it important to know just how much money is required to maintain the needed paper supply.
The average amount of paper used in an entire school per day is around 2,000 pages, and when examining the yearly totals this number skyrockets. In a year, a school can use around 360,000 pieces of paper (with 180 school days). If you were to expand the search nationwide, the number would be around 34 billion papers being used in schools every year.
Now when it comes to costs, the average price per page for paper is 5 cents, meaning that in this case where 34 billion pages are consumed annually, providing papers for every student in the US would cost roughly 2 billion dollars every year.
On top of the upfront price of paper there are other ways that using paper in schools can be costly. For example, reams of paper take up a lot of space, meaning a container in the room or an entire closet might have to be dedicated to just paper storage. Also besides the cost of space, students take home a lot of papers which could easily be misplaced or lost, as a result causing the total amount of paper teachers need to increase.
How to Reduce Paper Use in Schools
Document management is critical for educational department. There are a number of files teachers use daily, and it’s important to be able to access the documents quickly and easily.
There are some things you can do to reduce the amount of paper usage in your classroom. Digital document management strategies are streamlining the education department’s organizational tactics.
Using digital methods, document scanning is one simple way to transform a classroom. Scanning digitizes papers which makes distributing information faster and more efficient. Switching to a digital platform can help to minimize paper consumption.
Additionally, it moves toward a more efficient method of learning. More and more classrooms are utilizing laptops or tablets for example, meaning students are able to access coursework directly as well as submit homework at the click of a button. This makes grading and feedback easier for teachers.
This is a more environmentally-friendly option which completely eliminates the need for papers throughout schools and allows students to have access at any time to all the resources held within their class database. This streamlines things like research projects, and also allows teachers to provide instantaneous feedback to students on their assignments. Teachers are able to share and transfer documents which will ultimately decrease spending for the year.
The cost of scanning is around 7–12 cents per page. While it seems more costly upfront, it will be better in the long run due to not having to rescan documents. The benefits mentioned above also contribute to the importance of document scanning. The benefits outweigh its associated costs.
Want to Reduce Paper in Your School?
It is important to be considerate of the amount of paper and time being used everyday. Environmental factors, convenience, or efficiency could play heavily on the choice to switch to a paperless classroom.
Document scanning would have to eliminate high volumes of paper use while providing students with direct access to information and homework applications.
To locate a document scanning service provider in your area, fill out the form on the page, contact us directly using our live chat, or give us a call at (866) 385-3706 for a free, no-obligation quote and select the best scanning option for your needs.
