Carbon emissions from the printing of new currency notes for festive periods such as Chinese New Year, although significant, are generated only once a year (New hongbao notes create emissions equal to powering 430 flats, July 29).

However, the printing of documents and other things is a daily occurrence in the offices of many companies.

Employees should not print things for the sake of printing.

Many documents are printed unnecessarily, and could instead be scanned and stored in the company's shared servers or in discs and thumb drives for sales presentations or other assignments.

Also, listed companies should sign up with the Singapore SMS Sender ID Registry and send an SMS to shareholders with a link to click on to view their announcements, instead of sending them hard-copy documents.

Agenda items that require shareholders' votes can also be accessed via Singpass for digital voting.

This would be much greener, considering the huge number of shareholders that they need to send documents to.

Companies should also use double-sided printing to reduce paper consumption.

Multinational corporations and government agencies should take the lead in going paperless.

If people insist on receiving a hard copy, they should have to pay for it.

Less tech-savvy groups like the elderly could visit their nearest community club for help accessing documents.

Roland Paul Ang