Can a DMS help an organisation towards Net Zero?

During a meeting earlier this week, the subject of whether a document management system (DMS) could be seen as a more environmentally sustainable option or even part of a solution towards “net zero” was broached. Immediately my internal red flags, emergency flashing lights and wailing sirens went off! “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!”

In simple terms, being a net zero organisation means adding no more greenhouse gases to the Earth's atmosphere than the amount you're taking out. Net zero is intended to help lessen these climate-changing effects and limit global warming to levels that are safer for the world's population.

Let me clarify - I accept that human accelerated climate change is impacting our planet as scientific fact and I want to do everything in my power, in my own scope of influence to limit the damage of that change. So why would I be afraid of touting a DMS as a viable solution to assist any organisation achieve net zero?

Greenwashing

Gartner defines greenwashing as "the practice of making misleading claims about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology or company practice." This term is often used to describe situations where companies exaggerate or falsify their environmental efforts to appear more environmentally friendly than they actually are, thereby deceiving consumers and stakeholders.

“For many companies, environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have become a growing, board-level concern — not only for ethical and regulatory compliance reasons but because of increasing demands from customers and potential customers.” -Eugene Xiong, Founder of Foxit

So this is important. After the immediate panic had subsided, my logical brain took over and considered how best to answer the question - I did not have to hand any empirical evidence to show the benefits and the last thing I want to do is fall into the greenwashing camp. Having started with a caveat to the effect of I take the environment seriously, please do not take these answers as complete and please feel free to do your own research, I went along the lines of (in my considered opinion)*:

The paperless office

Paper is a resource that relies on the removal of trees from our forests, energy to transport and convert the raw material as well as the output (in production) of sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide, contributing to acid rain, greenhouse gases and water pollution.

Consider a hypothetical process that involves a minimum of 10 pieces of paper for each new customer someone signs up. Say, too, that the average customer service representative signs up five new people a day: that amounts to 50 pieces of paper daily. Multiply that by five days a week and 52 weeks in a year, that's 13,000 pieces of paper a year generated by each employee. Now, let's assume it’s a department of 10 people — then 130,000 pieces of paper a year are used for this single process. It takes 10 to 20 trees to produce that much paper.**

“Typically, old, mature trees produce more oxygen than younger trees. In fact, a mature oak tree can produce, on average, 100,000 litres of oxygen a year. That's about 274 litres of oxygen a day –– nearly half of what the average human needs in a day” - One Tree Planted

Yes of course a digital file still has an environmental ‘cost’ but it is far less than a piece of paper, transported potentially halfway around the world to then be imprinted with inks, shipped once more to a destination, processed (scanned, copied, filed etc), moved to a desk, potentially copied multiple times (fresh pieces of paper and ink) until it finally lies dormant in a box, in a converted cow shed somewhere near the M3…

I have explained the business benefits inherent in adopting a paperless process for efficiency, cost and compliance previously, so I won’t repeat those specifically here.

Deduplication

So you have gone digital (praise be), the paper is out and you instead create / share content from some form of shareable digital storage space (cloud, NAS etc).Which is all well and good but what controls are in place to manage that data? As I said, a digital file still has an environmental cost, so it would be prudent to ensure that multiple copies don’t exist and that content once finished with (life cycle completed) is removed in accordance with policy - right?

This is one of the biggest differences between simply going digital and applying a DMS within the organisation. Apart from simplifying / expediting the time it takes employees to locate documents, a DMS safeguards against duplication, applies access and feature controls on the content preventing printing, copies and unauthorised version creation. A DMS will also apply automated record retention policies and handle the removal of expired content overtime.

Reducing storage, reducing processing overheads and reducing the overall lifecycle of a digital file multiplied many hundreds of thousands of times makes a real difference to the carbon footprint of your organisation's digital files.

You can read more on the business benefits of DMS (regardless of organisation size) related to digital processing here.

The Right to Remote

For those in the UK, you may recall a change in April 2024 to employment laws allowing an employee to request flexible working - you can read the full article here on how a DMS can assist. It is essential therefore that an organisation’s systems can support those requests whilst still maintaining the compliance and efficiency around those jobs. A modern, cloud based DMS can make working from anywhere at any time as easy as being in the office. Same security and content controls, same application function and the same access to data.

Having the ability to allow employees to not commute or to conduct business with clients remotely, just as successfully as if they were there in person, can have a positive impact on the environment without introducing any risk to your organisation. As already mentioned, with the DMS access and functionality controls, you can also reduce the occurrence of unwanted (physical) copies or sharing through duplication that would increase a document's carbon footprint.

Final Thought

Yes there is potential for a DMS to help an organisation achieve their net zero goals. Do I have the numbers to prove that claim irrefutably - no. A couple of our partners are making efforts to actively contribute through tree planting schemes, carbon capture project funding or even the use of certified ‘green’ data centres which of course all helps.

So no, I am not going to come out right now with my “Save the planet, go DMS!” banners waving but the moment I have that empirical evidence, you bet I will!

Toby Gilbertson, Director. June 2024