Facing the eco fax – technology must go green

Globally, the need to consider the impact of technology on the environment is the basic premise upon which many operators within the ICT sector are constructing their strategies. According to Walter Bredell, CEO at Integr8 FAX, part of the Integr8 Group, the trend has now enveloped the burgeoning fax-to-email space.

Primarily the motivation to organize and apply a ‘green’ technology strategy is based on a world wide effort to contain or save costs says Bredell. Service providers within Asia, Europe, South Africa and the US are now positioning this aspect as a key selling point of solutions he adds.

”Enterprise data centres are struggling to keep pace with increasing power requirements for their infrastructures. Businesses today need to invest substantial amounts of money to conserve and sustain power supply as well as reduce the amount of wastage. Up until very recently the fax machine was considered a chief culprit in this regard,” says Bredell.

The reasons for this are clear says Bredell. He points to the fact that fax machines are usually left on continuously and usually in ‘standby mode’ and the average power consumption of these devices is 8.15W2

“Fax machines on standby generate over 60,000 tons of Carbon Dioxide. On average each fax machine receives three thousand fax pages a day based on fifteen faxes a day, of two to three pages each. Each fax is copied at east once,” says Bredell. “One tree produces on average, 16.674 reams of paper (8,333 sheets). Each fax machine results in the use of 6,000 sheets (fax transmissions and copying). Therefore 1,432,857 trees are consumed by fax transmission and copying of faxes each year.”

Put into local context, the pressure on organizations to reduce wastage is compounded by external influences of ongoing power cuts and load shedding. These issues are forcing users to save as much electricity as possible.

This creates opportunities in the IT industry to improve the environmental footprint, throughout the life cycle, of all products and services without any significant increase in price or impact on performance.

“We are busy moving from power efficiency of products and services to energy efficiency of products and services,” he adds. “Fax-to-email solutions today must improve the full life cycle of energy efficiency and the Carbon Dioxide footprint of a fax sent or received.”

Whilst there has been some progress made in the development and introduction of environmentally-friendly fax solutions, Bredell and his team are under no illusions of the work that lies ahead within the market.

“There is no doubt that the market has matured in this respect. We have introduced a number of sought after advantages such as the fact that faxes can no longer be lost or sent to the wrong recipients, e-mail systems are used to prioritize faxes and the latest technology is not limited by supply issues with critical resources such as paper or toner. There are no more paper jams thanks to the latest e-mail based solutions and all faxes are encrypted for security. However, much still needs to be done especially in light of supply and adoption,” Bredell continues.

Integr8 IT FAX continues to expand on its roll out of free fax-to-email solutions and now has established server infrastructure throughout South Africa and in the United Kingdom, with plans afoot to enter into the Asia market.