It seems that UK office workers may be suffering from 'green fatigue' and are reluctant to implement paper saving initiatives at work. Research conducted by Loudhouse on behalf of Kyocera has shown that levels of environmental concern among the UK's office workers have fallen over the past two years, while the amount of printing carried out has actually increased.

The average office worker goes through a staggering 10,000 sheets of paper per year, of which 6,800 are considered to be 'wasted'. Forty percent of respondents described themselves as 'paper people' which suggests that despite the increasing availability of technology such as tablet PCs and e-readers our love affair with the printed page is far from over.

Concern about environmental issues has fallen from a peak of 77% rating it as important to them in 2008 to 63% in 2010. Despite this drop in environmental concern, 70 percent of IT managers surveyed said that their companies could do a better job encouraging workers to print smarter, largely through employee education about the cost benefits of more efficient printing

Good news is that green printing policies are becoming more common in corporate offices, according to the workers surveyed. In-office recycling is commonplace, with 78 percent of companies encouraging paper recycling. And those ubiquitous email footers urging you to "Consider the environment before printing this message" have made their way into 55 percent of the companies surveyed.