Let’s be honest—there are really only two kinds of paper that are still relevant in our modern society:
1. Cash, though the need for paper currency is quickly disappearing with electronic transactions both large and small.
2. Toilet Paper, or is it more polite to call it “bathroom tissue”?
Cash still serves as a medium of exchange around the globe and continues to dominate in small transactions. Even with hip inventions like bitcoin and electronic wallets, few people want to sheepishly hand their debit card to the clerk at the local 7-Eleven to purchase that $1.25 Diet Coke refill.
Aside from the French, who have been working on a replacement for bathroom tissue through a means that involves high powered (and hopefully warm!) water nozzles, does anyone truly want to go completely paperless? Here’s one vote for the continual production of hygienic paper! Remember the Emma Paperless Future video?
In the business world, “going paperless” is so cliche that it makes “win-win” and “thinking outside the box” seem new and fresh, but reliance on paper has real costs. In the typical office, information is stored in one of three formats: