Do you have one of those multifunction copiers in your office? It's time to put it to good use.

Depending on your model, you may have some scanning options available to you. And if you're really lucky, your IT department is on the ball and has networked it so that you can e-mail yourself a nice PDF of your scans. Certain models from Canon, Ricoh, Xerox, and others have this scan to email feature.

Next time you need to send some documents, instead of rushing to the fax machine, go to your copier, scan the docs and have them emailed to your account. After it's in your inbox, forward it to the recipient and you're done. It's possible to send it directly to your recipient, but you may want to add a more descriptive subject line or body -- something that's better accomplished on your computer keyboard than on the basic interfaces on most copiers.

I can't speak to the power savings since ours is a pretty beefy machine, but I think I can safely say that the process consumes less power than two high-end business fax machines. Plus, the PCs, email servers and network/internet connections are up and running anyway, so it's a great way to piggyback on that infrastructure.

Also, it's very likely that the recipient will save on paper and toner since the file can be stored digitally and won't print out all but the most necessary documents. Another benefit is print quality. If the day comes that a hard copy is required (on recycled paper please) you'll get much better results from a printed PDF than a streaky, muddled fax.

I did it today and besides being a fairly easy process, it felt nice not milling around the fax machine wondering if I did it right (cryptic status codes, "dial 9?"). It's also nice to know that my colleague saved a bit of electricity and paper.

But the real trick is to encourage others to do the same.

If you can scan-to-email on your end, the battle is half won. If you no longer want to drown in faxes, consider asking senders to email docs or use an Internet fax service. It may help if you broadcast the sad news that your fax machine conveniently happened to break down with no replacement or repair in sight. You know, the usual red tape.

Happy non-faxing!

Photo Credit: Fax Machine - midweekpost/Flickr - Creative Commons