PaperSmart Greens the Blue

A fine example of Greening the Blue at the United Nations is the ISPS Secretariat's initative of 'PaperSmart' meetings at the United Nations. The simulation of which was successfully carried out in the General Assembly Hall on 18 May 2012. (UN staff only)

The PaperSmart Secretariat have made great progress towards thier pledge on the Greening the Blue website - "I pledge to... adopt the PaperSmart approach to make the UN more sustainable, efficient and accessible." 

The Secretariat have serviced six PaperSmart meetings  already, and they're gearing up for the UNCSD in Rio.  The 2nd Intersessional of the UNCSD was PaperSmart and this event alone succeeded in saving 900,000 pages.  The meetings were serviced with an ISPS Portal, ISPS Media, ISPS e-Publishing and ISPS Print on Demand services.   QR code posters with general documents for the meetings were introduced to the conference rooms and recieved a tremendous response from the participants.

The first ECOSOC interactive digital magazine (UN staff only) was launched on 10 January 2012. As compared to the 2,100 copies of the publication printed in 2011, this year, the dialogues went digital, saving 735,000 full colour pages, as well as distribution costs.

In an effort to understand and work with the PaperSmart methods of sustainability and efficiency in a coordinated manner, the ISPS Secretariat has trained over 160 staff members at UNHQ and UNON.  The UNON training was carried out over webcast and video conferencing - another effort towards greening the blue.

 Find out more about making your meetings PaperSmart.