How going paperless can make your school more environmentally friendly

With Earth Day on the way, your school is likely brainstorming ways to demonstrate your commitment to sustainability. Every day offers a wealth of opportunities to make small changes that add up to big improvements — from replacing disposable paper towels with reusable ones, to building a classroom compost bin or rainwater collection barrel. And of course, every paper document you convert to a digital file reduces your school’s environmental impact, too.

In fact, simply replacing paper worksheets and signatures with digital ones can save your institution a significant amount of money, time and space, while measurably reducing your carbon footprint. With mobile apps like Adobe Acrobat Sign and Adobe Scan, adopting these sustainable technologies is easier than ever at the classroom level — and over time, these tools can help teachers and admins automate everyday workflows, powering your school’s journey toward full-fledged digital transformation.

Let's take a closer look at how to go paperless — and how sustainable paperless practices can reduce your school’s environmental impact, while saving money and simplifying day-to-day tasks throughout your institution.

Paperless docs take up less space, and make admin work more efficient

Over the past year, millions of students, teachers and administrators have transitioned from remote-learning classrooms back to in-person schools. And while the pandemic has created numerous challenges, it also kickstarted schools’ much-needed evolution from paper-centric document processes to paperless ones. As a result, many physical classrooms and admin offices now incorporate technologies like video conferencing, cloud document sharing and e-signatures — and they are already reaping the benefits of paperless efficiency.

For example, a 2021 Hotwire survey reveals that 33 percent of educational institutions are prioritizing the process of converting paper forms to digital ones. Apps like Adobe Scan help streamline this transition, by using an iOS or Android smartphone’s camera to convert paper documents into high-resolution PDF files that can be shared and signed electronically. In fact, many parents and students say they prefer digital documents over paper ones, which are much more likely to get smudged, torn or misplaced.

Digital documents can be saved on a secure local hard drive, or in the cloud — freeing up storage space for more practical uses, while reducing a school’s reliance on bulky filing cabinets. What’s more, paperless forms and worksheets are much easier to organize, and can be searched and retrieved with just a few keystrokes. That means instead of spending hours digging through dusty archives, your school’s admin staff can rapidly locate documents when they are needed, and even automate many time-consuming aspects of administrative work.

In light of these space and time savings, it’s easy to see why 77 percent of educational leaders consider “going paperless” to be an increasingly important effort.

Online document signing significantly reduces environmental waste

When it comes to environmental impact, paper forms represent some of the most wasteful document processes within any institution. Nearly 80 percent of U.S. education workflows still involve time-consuming, error-prone pieces of paper — which have to be mailed out and sent back using costly envelopes and postage, generating mountains of unnecessary waste every step of the way. Even worse, “wet” signatures are easy to fake, and easier to lose. Even after they have made it to your inbox, they often take weeks or months to verify and process.

The good news is that paper signatures have been rendered obsolete by qualified e-signatures (QES), which are legally binding in most jurisdictions. Unlike a traditional “wet” signature, a QES is automatically verified by multiple trust service providers (TSP), and a document signed with a QES can be collected remotely on any compatible device, such as a smartphone or laptop. By pairing paperless forms with e-signatures, many institutions have reduced form processing times from weeks to mere minutes — while eliminating the need for wasteful packaging and shipping, not to mention the pollution created by paper mills.

Today’s new generation of document apps make it easy to convert paper forms into digital ones, and to help save forests by collecting signatures remotely. Adobe Acrobat, for example, builds on Scan’s document-converting capabilities, by transforming scanned docs into fillable PDF forms that can be pre-populated with the most common responses. Adobe Acrobat Sign streamlines the signing process even further, by automatically scrolling to each point in the document that needs to be signed, and prompting the recipient to apply their verified signature. Once signing is complete, the document is instantly returned to you for final processing.

These simple changes save much more than just time. Research shows that switching to digital forms processes can dramatically reduce your school’s carbon footprint as well. For every 1,000 students who adopt paperless forms and signatures, an institution saves an average of 1,530 gallons of water, 533 pounds of wood, 534 kilowatt-hours of energy, 84 pounds of waste, and 1,287 pounds of carbon dioxide. Check out Adobe’s handy Savings Calculator to see exactly how much your school could be saving right now by going paperless.

When schools cut down on paper, they save money, too

While reduced environmental impact provides a powerful argument for going paperless, switching to digital documents is also the smartest play from a budgetary perspective. Converting paper forms and signatures to electronically signed PDFs can set your school free from the high costs of envelopes, postage and transportation. Over time, those reduced expenses can add up to tens of thousands of dollars a year in savings, both in environmental and financial terms.

What’s more, by replacing cumbersome filing cabinets with real-time collaboration platforms like Adobe Creative Cloud, your school can dramatically reduce the costs of storing documents, while freeing up physical real estate for more productive tasks. A full 50 percent of educators cite “easier access to information” as the main reason they’re investing in digital transformation — and by making it easier to automate back-office workflows, paperless documents and platforms make information much easier to access, analyze, and leverage toward improving your institution in even more cost-effective ways.

Your school will also reap the cost savings of lower energy and water bills, as well as reduced waste-removal expenses, by switching from printing to sustainable paperless processes. Across all these areas, a transition to electronically signed PDFs is an investment that quickly pays for itself, and then some.

In fact, every step away from paper represents a step toward a more sustainable future — and a step on your school’s larger journey toward digital transformation. You can start going digital with just a few simple changes, like converting paperwork to paperless documents. This makes it easier to stay digital, by digitizing document workflows with e-signature tools. And by automating those workflows, your school can truly be digital, while saving trees and reducing pollution in a variety of measurable ways.

At Adobe, we are also investing heavily in tools that will support you on this journey. Visit our Education Resource Hub, for free guides and how-to videos — and to discover more about how small day-to-day changes can help kickstart your school’s digital transformation, and make your school a powerful example of sustainability.