The real cost and sustainability of print

In short: The real cost of print extends far beyond toner to energy, waste, uncontrolled colour, device sprawl and support time, and most fleets cost more than the contract suggests. Print also carries an environmental footprint that clients and tenders increasingly ask about. Managed print, fleet right-sizing, a carbon offsetting scheme and high recycling rates reduce both the cost and the impact.

When a finance director looks at the cost of print, the figure usually starts and ends with the supplies invoice. Toner is the visible cost, the one that arrives with a number on it, so it is the cost that gets scrutinised and negotiated. It is also, in most organisations, a long way from the whole picture. The expensive part of print is the part that never appears on a single line of the budget. This piece is for the finance director and the sustainability lead, because the two perspectives have converged: the things that make print expensive are largely the same things that make it wasteful.

The costs that do not arrive as an invoice

Toner is real, but it is the tip. Underneath it sit costs spread across other budgets and other people’s time, which is why they are so easy to miss.

• Energy. A fleet drawing power continuously, often left on overnight and at weekends, adds up. Older and oversized devices doing small jobs draw more than the work justifies. Energy is metered at building level, so the print share is rarely separated out.
• Waste. Paper printed and never collected, drafts that go straight to the bin, mis-prints, and the consumables and packaging that come with every cartridge. Waste is a cost twice: once to buy the materials and again to dispose of them.
• Uncontrolled colour. A colour page costs several times what a mono page costs. When every device defaults to colour and nobody sets a policy, a great deal of routine internal printing happens in colour for no reason anyone chose. This is one of the largest avoidable line items in a typical operation, and it stays invisible until volume is broken down by colour and mono.
• Device sprawl. Desktop printers arrive one at a time: a manager wants their own, a department buys one to avoid a walk, a new office inherits whatever was there. Each is a small decision, none is reviewed, and over a few years the fleet quietly doubles. Every extra device carries its own consumables, energy draw, support burden and security exposure while running well below capacity.
• Support time. Every jam, driver problem and device that will not connect consumes someone’s time, often an expensive IT person needed elsewhere. A reactive operation, where attention only arrives after a failure, spends a surprising amount of skilled time on a machine that should look after itself.
• Downtime. When a device fails and the work stops, the cost is not the repair. It is the people waiting and the work that does not get done until it is fixed.

Add these together and the true cost of print is reliably higher than the contract figure, sometimes substantially. The first useful step is not to cut anything. It is to measure, because a cost that has never been measured cannot be managed, and a fleet that grew by accretion is almost always larger and hungrier than the work requires.

The environmental cost, now a business cost

For a long time the environmental footprint of print was a matter of conscience rather than commerce. That has changed. Clients ask about it in tenders, boards ask about it in reporting, and larger customers increasingly expect suppliers to account for their own impact as part of supply-chain commitments. The footprint has become a business cost because someone is now asking to see it.

It has the same components as the financial cost, viewed through a different lens. Energy use carries carbon, paper carries the impact of its production, and consumables and device manufacturing carry an embedded footprint that an oversized fleet multiplies. The encouraging part is that the levers are shared. The actions that reduce the cost of print, fewer and better-used devices, less waste, controlled colour, lower energy draw, are the same actions that reduce its environmental impact. You are rarely trading one against the other.

How managed print reduces both

A managed print service, done properly, attacks the cost and the footprint from the same direction, because they share a root cause: a fleet larger, older and less controlled than it needs to be.

• Right-sizing the fleet. A proper assessment of what gets printed, where and by whom usually shows the estate can be smaller. Consolidating onto fewer, better-placed and appropriately sized devices cuts energy, consumables, support and the embedded hardware footprint in one move.
• Controlling colour and waste. Sensible defaults, mono as standard and duplex by default, plus secure release so unwanted jobs are never printed, reduce the paper bill and the waste. Reporting makes the previously invisible visible, so colour use becomes a choice rather than an accident.
• Proactive monitoring instead of reactive repair. Cloud-connected monitoring flags a device before it fails and dispatches consumables on actual usage rather than a panicked order. Automated toner dispatch means supplies arrive when needed, not stockpiled and not run dry mid-job. Downtime falls, and the skilled time spent firefighting falls with it.
• A single, accountable relationship. Consolidated billing replaces a scatter of invoices with one view of what print actually costs, which is the precondition for managing it.

On the environmental side, the better offers go further than efficiency. Dragonfly Tech runs a Carbon Zero scheme and maintains high recycling rates on consumables and hardware, so the residual footprint of the fleet is offset and materials that would otherwise become waste are recovered. Combined with a right-sized estate, that turns print from an awkward question in a tender into one a firm can answer with figures.

The honest summary is that most organisations pay more for print than they think and account for less of its impact than their clients now expect. Both are fixable, and they are fixable together. If you want the full picture on print as a governance issue, cost and sustainability are one part of why print deserves to be managed rather than left to grow on its own. The toner invoice was never the real number.

Frequently asked questions

What is print actually costing us beyond toner?

Considerably more than the supplies invoice suggests. The hidden costs include energy, waste, uncontrolled colour printing, device sprawl, IT support time and downtime when a device fails. These sit across different budgets and rarely get attributed to print, which is why the true figure is usually well above the contract cost. Measuring it is the first step to managing it.

How do we reduce the environmental impact of print?

Reduce and right-size the fleet, set mono and duplex as defaults, control colour use, and switch to proactive monitoring so devices run efficiently and consumables are not wasted. On top of that, a carbon offsetting scheme and high recycling rates address the residual footprint. The actions that cut cost and the actions that cut impact are largely the same.

Why is uncontrolled colour printing such a big cost?

Because a colour page costs several times what a mono page costs, and when every device defaults to colour with no policy, a large share of routine internal printing happens in colour for no chosen reason. It is one of the largest avoidable costs in a typical fleet and stays invisible until volume is broken down by colour versus mono.

Will reducing print costs mean buying more technology?

Not usually. The biggest savings come from having fewer, better-used devices and controlling how they are used, not from adding equipment. A managed service typically right-sizes the fleet down, replaces reactive repair with proactive monitoring, and consolidates billing so the real cost is finally visible and manageable.