The paperless office doesn’t seem any closer to reality as flying cars do. As connected as everyone is, it would seem that printing documents or sending messages on paper should be on the verge of extinction, but a new survey indicates that we’re still wasting far more paper than we should be.

To find out how offices are using paper, Nitro, a digital documents and workflow company, surveyed more than 500 office workers, balanced by gender and spread across all regions of the country. The results illustrate a trend in the general direction of a paperless office, but the harsh reality is that paper appears to be a hard habit to break.

According to the Nitro survey, 42 percent of respondents send faxes “most of the time” or “always” (see infographic below). What does that even mean? Are there still people who don’t use email, instant messaging, or any other form of digital communication? It seems unlikely—if not impossible.

Only 3.9 percent claim to “never” send faxes. Count me in that bunch. I own a fax machine that’s collecting dust somewhere in my attic, but never use it. When someone requests that I fax something, it elicits a somewhat visceral response. I then explain that it’s 2012 and that we’ve evolved beyond faxing.

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