And most people never stop to think about the trees they could be saving - they just press the print button, even though they realise they don't necessarily need to print out so many documents every day.

Lexmark printers, which carried out the research among 3,000 workers across Europe, said the public sector wasted far less paper than private ventures.

A spokesman told Sky News:

"Our research shows the extent of the wastage problem and that it goes right up to the boardroom, where senior executives are unaware of the bottom-line impact of bad printing habits."