Law to mandate double-sided printing could save Nevada $1M a year

CARSON CITY — Assembly Assistant Majority Whip Heidi Swank wants to save the state money and protect the environment by requiring government agencies to use both sides of a piece of paper when printing documents.

“This is really a good governance bill,” Swank, D-Las Vegas, told members of the Assembly Committee on Government Affairs on Thursday.

Assembly Bill 264 would require state agencies, school districts, the Legislative Counsel Bureau and the Nevada System of Higher Education to set printer defaults to doubled-sided printing.

The bill also includes the courts, though the judicial branch would likely be excluded from the requirements.

“I’ve never seen where the courts will accept a two-sided printed page,” said Assemblyman Al Kramer, R-Carson City.

The committee chairman, Assemblyman Edgar Flores, agreed.

“I submitted a motion once to a court that was double sided,” said Flores, a Las Vegas Democrat and a lawyer. “The court said we’re not having it.”

Swank said an average employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year. Researchers at Xerox found that about half of documents printed are thrown away within 24 hours.

She calculated the state could save $100 in paper costs, per employee, annually.

For a workforce with 20,000 employees, the savings could add up to $1 million annually, Swank said. At the same time, she said, the move could save 18 million gallons of water, 18,000 trees and 800,000 gallons of gas used in paper manufacturing.

The bill allows an exemption if any agency has older copiers not equipped to handled two-sided printing, but all new copiers would have to be capable of printing both sides.

There are no penalties for non-compliance.

Assemblyman Richard Carrillo, D-Las Vegas, said there would likely be a lot of wasted paper as workers get used to the idea.

Assemblyman Skip Daly, D-Sparks, conceded that “there will be some growing pains.”

But he said it’s a good idea if it will save a few dollars. Then he quipped, “You just have to look out for the copy police.”

No one else spoke for or against the bill, and no action was taken by the committee.

Contact Sandra Chereb at schereb@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-3821. Follow @SandraChereb on Twitter.