Call to action: Think before you print

An integral pillar of Saudi Vision 2030 is to sustain and enhance the Kingdom’s environmental footprint. HRH Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has emphasized the importance of the environment and the positive correlation it has on many of the Kingdom’s goals in terms of health, quality of life, and tourism.

The Kingdom has taken this charge to heart.

At the proposed King Salman Energy Park (SPARK), its green initiative will help improve air quality and reduce temperatures throughout the city. And other entities are working to achieve similar goals, including the Green Riyadh Project Vision, which hopes to help the capital city become one of the top 100 cities of the world through regulating activities such as logging and livestock grazing to enhance agricultural life. 

These efforts are key to attracting the rest of the world as an international tourism destination being a greener Kingdom.

Meanwhile, the Kingdom’s green initiative also targets areas such as paper waste. The financial and environmental costs associated with the production, handling, and recycling of paper is too significant to be ignored. In today’s digital age, institutes are reshaping the way they do business by minimizing the use of paper, but industry is still a long way from shaking its dependency on this essential commodity.

Government entities are putting an extraordinary effort to reduce their dependency on paper-based processes and shifting toward digital mediums by providing e-Services to execute day-to-day tasks with a click of a button, bypassing a timely paperwork process. Capitalizing on digital services today enables us to make appointments, renew passports, residents’ cards, IDs, driver’s licenses, and other tasks from one mobile application, thereby minimizing paper waste.

Aramco is working to do its part as well. Its Computer Operations Department introduced “CloudPrint” as a service that not only provides reliable services to the workforce, it has significantly reduced paper waste — over 1,900 trees already this year. That translates into 1,600 gallons of water saved, 800,000 kilowatt hours of energy not spent, and 452,000 pounds of carbon dioxide that did not pollute the environment.

Aramco has always been a role model in its core values such as safety, and preserving the environment and planet, and places this utmost priority as a safety element. This is a call out to every process to revisit their processes, identify the potential, and remodel their services to go paperless. 

And while change is challenging and costly, it is also rewarding as a long-term vision. It is our professional and national duty as a corporation and as a country to do what it takes and lead the way toward a healthier greener future.