Denver Peak Academy

“One individual cannot possibly make a difference, alone. It is individual efforts, collectively, that makes a noticeable difference—all the difference in the world!” – Dr. Jane Goodall

– Dr. Jane Goodall

They slice through paper-waste like it’s warm butter, leaving hard and soft cost savings in their wake. If trees could applaud, the forest would be deafening anytime they go for a hike. Improving processes and implementing change wherever they go, they are…the Paper Avengers! Let’s meet these ladies who are saving paper and blasting through inefficiency.

Gabby Corral, Julie Wolfe and Tina Vinson all attended Green Belt training in August, never knowing that their paths would lead them in the same direction: to find an innovation that would save paper.

Gabby works for the Denver Fire Department in the Fire Prevention Division. One of her daily tasks is responding to CORA requests. Previously, this required printing out the requested permit, redacting it by hand with correction fluid, scanning it in to email it to the requestor, and then throwing away the paper copy. On large requests, this can mean over a hundred sheets of paper. Gabby earned her Paper Avenger wings by digitizing this process, using Adobe PDF to redact so that printing out a paper copy was unnecessary.
Yearly Hard Savings: $5,916.04 Yearly Soft Savings: $21,450

Julie works for the Controller’s Office in the Payroll Division. Her entire team uses a very old, and decrepit fax machine that is tired of delivering faxes correctly, often cutting off half of the page. The tight budget year meant no new fax machine, but out of this necessity came genius. Instead of using the grumpy fax machine, Julie found a program that allows the entire team to fax from their computers. Not only does this save the time of fighting with the curmudgeon fax machine, but it also saves all of the paper this beastly machine needed to be fed. Frustration obliterated, paper avenged.
Yearly Hard Savings: $405.60 Yearly Soft Savings: $18,252

Tina works for the Denver County Court in the Warrants Division. She was noticing that a lot of one-sided print jobs were going in the recycling bin, due to the nature of the work in the bonding office. However, the warrants office could reuse the blank side of this paper, if only they knew it existed. Tina to the rescue! She now takes her trusty ‘Double Side It!’ bin full of just-waiting-to-be-used-again paper between offices to eliminate the waste. “I just felt like I needed to do my part to help the environment, even if it’s just in this small way.”
Yearly Hard Savings: $324.00

You can be a Paper Avenger too! Or maybe you already are! Share your paper-saving story with us so we can keep making a collective, noticeable difference together.