Six eco-friendly RIM tips that could save you money

Protecting the environment can translate into an improved bottom line, from the cost savings associated with resource conservation, to benefits of increased consumer and shareholder confidence. In this blog we will be sharing six ways to incorporate environmentally friendly practices into your organization’s RIM processes.

1. The more you throw away, the more you can conserve

Without application of sound RIM principles, a company can end up storing literally tons of records that have limited legal or operational value. Those costs are one reason to introduce environmentally-friendly practices to your RIM program.

An effective media recycling program puts otherwise useless materials back into productive circulation as raw material while freeing up space and maintenance resources. To help your company meet this cost saving goal and help protect the environment, remove material that is no longer useful, particularly:

• duplicate copies, outdated publications, draft documents and other “non-record” material
• official records whose standard retention periods have lapsed

2. Include a records retention schedule in your business practices

If your company has a records retention schedule, clean-up days should include identifying records that have reached the end of their retention period, are redundant, and serve no other legal or business need. If your company does not have a records retention schedule, it should develop one at the earliest opportunity.

3. If you must keep it, store it efficiently

The required footprint for storing needed records can be optimized with the right filing equipment that can save you time and space. Lateral filing is one way to save space within your organization. More traditional vertical filing arranges files from front to back in a pull-out drawer. A four-foot deep vertical file cabinet requires an additional four feet of floor space at the front to accommodate the pull out. Lateral filing solves this problem by arranging files from left to right, reducing the necessary clearance space to the length of one file folder.

4. Mobile shelving systems

These systems are equipped with rollers, which sit on tracks on the floor. Instead of one aisle for every 2 rows of stationary shelving, a high density mobile shelving solution can function with as little as one aisle, which users move to access files in a given row.

5. File folder selection

The best file folders are designed to hold labels on the side rather than the top tab. This design eliminates the need for pull-out drawers and bulky hanging folders, as well as allowing more rows of labels to be readable from a normal standing position. TAB offers a wide variety of file folder solutions, as well as some designed specifically for reducing your organizations environmental footprint.

6. Use offsite storage wisely

Using a commercial storage facility can reduce the environmental footprint of a file collection even further, by storing more records in less space. The key is to select records for offsite storage carefully and to manage the flow of records to and from storage. The most cost effective and environmentally friendly offsite storage programs optimize the productivity of each trip to and from the storage facility.

Next steps

• To learn how easy it is to design a green file storage solution download our easy to use guide
• Talk to a TAB representative about how we can help make your records management more environmentally friendly