The Environmental Impact of Online Faxing

In today's digital age, it's never been easier to go paperless with online faxing for better convenience and sustainability for the environment. Though traditional faxing methods were once the staple for every business, this practice has now been shown to consistently produce a large amount of waste and energy consumption, paving the path for paperless communications.

So, whether you need to send medical records, government forms, purchase orders, legal documents, or other paperwork, using an online faxing service like FAXAGE can help you get the job done in a more eco-friendly way.

The Environmental Impact of Traditional Faxing

As we briefly mentioned above, traditional faxing is much more harmful to the environment than its online counterpart. From its initial manufacturing to the ultimate use and disposal of toner cartridges, paper, and fax machines, the traditional faxing industry produces a significant carbon footprint.

By nature, traditional faxing uses a large amount of paper since a document is automatically printed each time you send or receive a fax. Given the fact that paper makes up about 26% of total landfill waste, the paper waste produced from regular faxing only contributes to this problem.

Not to mention, there is a great deal of energy and resources involved in paper and toner cartridge production, which each rely on large amounts of water, energy, and chemicals. So, any process that prints documents consistently contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption.

In addition, traditional fax machines can be bulky, taking up space and requiring energy to operate, which further adds to the overall carbon footprint of faxing.

The Rise of Online Faxing

Luckily, online faxing has emerged as a more sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to traditional faxing. With this method, you can send and receive documents over the Internet rather than through a phone line.

Online faxing all but eliminates the need for a physical fax machine and reduces your consumption of paper and toner cartridges since you have more control over which documents you need to print. Instead, you can turn your everyday devices like cell phones, tablets, and computers into a faxing device as long as they are connected to the Internet.

Take FAXAGE, for instance, a reliable and scalable digital faxing service that allows you to securely send and receive faxes through email, website, mobile app, and/or API across the United States and Canada. From just one account, you can send and receive millions of faxes each month and thousands of fax numbers. Think of all the paper you could save on a monthly basis with digital faxing through FAXAGE!

Reducing Paper Consumption Through Online Faxing

Online faxing allows businesses to minimize their carbon footprint and reduce the amount of waste they produce.

Specifically, digital faxing can save a great deal of paper waste. When using traditional fax machines, any fax you send or receive is printed automatically. You can’t control which documents get printed, even if the fax was sent in error, is only partially complete, includes a blank page, or contains any other issues.

But, with online faxing, you can decide which documents you want to print, which you can delete and ignore, and which can remain archived as digital copies. Not only will this save a great deal of paper, but it will also reduce your consumption of toner and ink as well. Even if you do need to print a digital fax, you can use recycled paper to help offset its environmental impact.

Energy Efficiency and Conservation

Aside from lower paper consumption, online faxing can also help minimize your carbon footprint by reducing the amount of energy and resources you use to send and receive faxes.

According to some estimates, reducing your use of paper by 5% each year could save 360 million gallons of water. So, using a digital faxing service can provide a wealth of benefits for the environment by helping you avoid paper waste.

With online faxing, you can start to make the transition to a paperless environment that helps you save valuable resources while making your processes more efficient and eco-friendly. After transitioning to digital faxing, you can audit the rest of your workflows to see where you could do a better job at reducing paper waste and needless energy consumption.

Forward With FAXAGE

The need to exchange documents and communication between businesses isn’t going away. However, companies now have a better alternative to traditional faxing with digital services that offer the same features but with a much lower impact on the environment.

With a value-leading provider like FAXAGE, small and medium-sized businesses can manage multiple fax numbers from just one single account. Even larger enterprises can make the switch with FAXAGE using our wholesale Fax API service.

Our flexible fax solution can be tailored to fit the unique process requirements of each business and features industry-leading secure faxing options including SSL/TLS transport, PGP security, and password-based security.

FAXAGE Now

Traditional faxing is a highly resource-intensive practice that makes businesses inefficient with their paper and energy consumption. But, there is a more eco-friendly communication method that businesses can adopt.

With online faxing, you can quickly send and receive faxes from your Internet-enabled device, gaining more control over which files you need to print while the rest are securely stored online. No matter the size of your business, you can join the digital faxing movement and make an environmental difference today with FAXAGE, a leading provider of online fax services.