Council's chief goes paperless

Chief Executive of Three Rivers District Council, Steven Halls, has made a green New Year's resolution - his office has gone 'paperless' from 1 January.

He has made the move to help the Council reduce its environmental impact and carbon footprint; it follows a range of other measures taken by the Council recently.

The 'paperless office' means that all documents the Chief Executive deals with, which can amount to over 200 pages every day, will be in electronic form only.  Any paper documents that do come to his office, such as letters that must be sent by post, will be scanned and then recycled, thus also saving on filing cabinets.

The District Council has recently made a range of commitments to reducing its environmental impact.

Dr Halls says:

"No doubt my new paperless office will initially be a challenge, but I hope that everyone will see how simple it is and what a huge difference it makes. I deal with so much paperwork in the average day but I also receive most of it electronically, so it makes complete sense to go paperless. We all have to do our bit to protect the environment and reduce our impact on it, and this is a really effective way to do it."

The move follows a range of recent initiatives the Council has introduced in order to reduce its environmental impact, including switching to recycled paper for all office printers and photocopiers, in addition to already recycling all paper, card, cans and plastic bottles used in the Council offices.

Three Rivers has the highest recycling rate for domestic waste in Hertfordshire at over 40%. The Council was recently named by Defra as the 20th highest recycling district in the whole country for 2005/06, and also the 10th highest improver in the country for recycling.