Temecula Realtors embrace Paper-less Challenge

Ongoing in our society is the need to save some trees, we are already big on recycling, and try to make sure you understand the full phrase - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It is easy to jump straight to the Recycling part, but the other two, are equally as important; Reducing the waste we create and Reusing some of it (A lot of printed materials that are harmless, can easily be colored on by kids... In my case, a house makes for good coloring...

One of the changes, we made at our office this new year, is all file are now paperless... Well, not entirely, we still have to sign papers and keep a working file, but the final file is now digital.

This means that when we receive electronic documents, we can print a signature page, and keep the rest as digital files, that can quickly ave a few hundred pages of disclosures in a file.

So, for us, the next challenge, is taking it up a notch. That we can do in the following ways:

• Reduce printed documents by incorporating electronic signatures more in our work.
• Using online fax services, allowing us to receive a doc, print just the page we need, and save the rest as a digital file.
• Reduce the amount of paper communications sent to clients and used for marketing.
• Signs with QR codes, can be scanned for listing information, reducing the need for fliers.
• And one of the most obvious parts, make sure your waste paper is put in recycle, not trash...

At Terkel Sorensen and Associates, we are already using QR codes on our signs, although we are not seeing a huge reduction in paper fliers yet, I think it will come, as the smart phone becomes more ubiquitous.

To further this, we are also using QR codes on our business cards, reducing paper fliers with information, as clients can now go directly to our online videos or get our contact information - with no paper involved.

As always, if you have comments to this, or ideas for how we can further reduce our use of paper, I would love to hear about it.

"This post is written as a submission to the ActiveRain & Kodak Paper-less Challenge contest. I have the chance to win the high speed KODAK SCANMATE i1120 Scanner, great for helping real estate professionals reduce their stacks of paper by scanning contracts, photos and business cards in seconds."