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Environmental impact · estimate

Less paper.
Fewer trips.
More forest.

NGOs lose time and paper to disconnected tools: the same form gets typed, printed, signed and filed more than once. When approvals, timesheets, leave, claims and reports move into one connected place, stacks of forms and car rides to collect signatures can fade away. Here is roughly what that could be worth, as an estimate and not a promise.

Estimate your organisation How we calculate

Your estimate

Move the slider to your staff size and pick how much of your paper you think would move online. Every figure is an estimate, per year.

Share of paper replaced

Low 20% · Mid 40% · High 60% of about 10,000 sheets per person a year. These are our planning assumptions, not measurements.

Estimated yearly figures

Estimate for 50 staff at the mid case, 40% of paper replaced: about 1 tonne of paper (200,000 sheets), 27 trees, 95 cubic metres of wastewater, 10,700 kilowatt-hours of energy, and net 3.1 tonnes of CO₂e, about 0.7 cars for a year.

about 1 tonne

Paper

200,000 sheets, in metric tonnes (1,000 kg)

about 27

Trees

not needed to make that paper

about 95 m³

Water

mill wastewater avoided, not total water use

about 10,700 kWh

Energy (all kinds)

electricity, heat and fuel to make the paper

about 3.1 tonnes

Net CO₂e

CO₂-equivalent, after running costs

about 0.7 cars

Like taking off the road

for a year

That’s about 27 trees’ worth of paper not needed every year

One tree icon = one tree.

Rounded yearly estimates, not measurements or guarantees. See “How we calculate” for every factor, source and assumption.

One NGO, one year

A 50-person organisation at the middle estimate. This is the arithmetic for an example, not a case study: it does not describe any real organisation or customer.

  1. 1 · Today

    500,000 sheets

    Forms, approvals and reports printed across the year, assuming 50 staff × 10,000 sheets.

  2. 2 · Moved online

    40% replaced

    About 200,000 sheets, roughly 1 tonne of paper, not printed.

  3. 3 · Avoided

    ~27 trees
    ~95 m³ water

    Plus about 10,700 kWh of mill energy.

  4. 4 · Climate

    ~3.1 tonnes CO₂e

    Net: paper 2.8 t, plus avoided car trips 0.52 t, minus 0.2 t to run it online. About 0.7 cars for a year.

How we calculate

Every factor, its source and every assumption. Published factors are linked to their sources; assumptions are EMPOBase’s own.

Published factors
Our assumptions
  • Each A4 sheet weighs about 5 g (210 × 297 mm at a common 80 g/m² is about 5.0 g). This is EMPOBase’s own conversion, not a cited figure.
  • EMPOBase’s planning cases: 20% (low), 40% (mid) or 60% (high) of an organisation’s paper is replaced.
  • Two fewer car trips of 20 km a week for every 50 staff, to carry papers for signature (about 0.01 t of CO₂ per person a year at 0.25 kg per km).
  • About 10 kWh per user per year to run it online, at 0.4 kg of CO₂ per kWh, subtracted from the savings. Every staff member counts as a user.

These assumptions are ours. They have not been measured or independently audited.

The formula

  • sheets = staff × 10,000 × share replaced
  • tonnes of paper = sheets × 5 g ÷ 1,000,000
  • trees = tonnes × 26.5 · wastewater (m³) = tonnes × 95 · energy (kWh) = tonnes × 10,700
  • net CO₂e (t) = tonnes × 2.8 + staff × 0.0104 (car trips) − staff × 0.004 (running online)
  • cars for a year = net CO₂e ÷ 4.6

Sheets are exact arithmetic on your inputs. Other figures are rounded to two significant figures (energy to three, cars to one decimal), so small differences between rounded numbers are expected.

Caveats
  • The figures are for virgin paper; recycled paper avoids less.
  • The paper factors come from a white paper dated April 2012 (EPN’s Paper Calculator v3.2) that EPN has hosted since 2017, so they are old.
  • The water figure is wastewater at the mill, not total water use.
  • The 10,000-sheet figure is older US office data; real use varies widely, especially in field offices.
  • Actual savings depend on how much paper your organisation really replaces. These are estimates, not measured results, and EMPOBase makes no claim about any customer’s actual savings.
  • The car-trip and online-running figures are our own assumptions and can move the net CO₂e result noticeably for small organisations.

This page is an illustrative estimator. It is not a carbon audit, a certification or an offset.