Whether running a small business, or simply trying to keep up with your home printing demands, we all want to save money on ink and toner costs. Making our print jobs as efficient as possible cannot only keep money in our wallets, but it can also offer some important environmental benefits as well. By using less ink and toner, we can all minimize our overall carbon footprint by having to get rid of fewer empty cartridges over the lifetime of our printers. When looking to save costs on ink and toner for your printer, consider these three proven tips:

Use an Environmentally Conscious Font

Recent news reports have shown that the type of font you use when printing can truly make a difference in the amount of ink and toner you will have to use when printing each document in your queue. Some fonts use small holes within each of the letters and can prove far less expensive to print than some of their non-holed font counterparts. In some cases, simply changing your font type to a more eco-friendly option can actually reduce toner usage by up to 25%! Do a little research and pinpoint which font types will not only work best with your specific print job objectives, but will also help you save money on ink and toner costs.

Keep Start and Stop Cycles to a Minimum

Laser printer users often notice that their device “whirls” both before and after every printed page gets process. Essentially, the laser printers start, prints and then subsequently slows down every time it prints a page. While it may seem like an innocuous process, that additional starting and stopping can actually incur extensive wear and tear on the toner cartridges, resulting in lower grade print jobs as well as possible future defects. Overtime, every time the start/stop process occurs, unused toner can actually build up in the drum and eventually end up in the cartridge’s waste bin. Naturally, there will be times when you only have to print a single page, making the start/stop cycle unavoidable. However, for larger jobs, minimize this cycle by going into your computer Printer Properties / Advanced Tab and indicate that you want to begin your printing on multiple page jobs after the last job is spooled.

Reduce Output resolution

This tip is specifically for owners of laser/inkjet printers that have a resolution setting found on the device itself. The lower the designated resolution, the less overall toner particles needed to finish the print job. Yes, the images may not appear as dark as they will with higher resolutions but, for jobs that don’t require such dark images, minimizing the resolution will expend less toner on every page and can also make your printer work faster.

Look for the Best Pricing Possible

A fourth tip for saving money on your ink and toner costs: Know the best places to shop to ensure you’re always getting the best deals possible! Partnering with vendors who offer group discount pricing for added value can truly save you significantly throughout the lifetime of your printer.