For some projects / groups, printing costs are ~30% of the total budget. A good example is sending out ~200,000,000 Social Security statements. At some point within the Social Security Administration it's just a few people running an automated system. This is when Toyota style continuous process improvement can make things lean.

PS: It's true that people who have been around for a long time tend to be promoted, but those who innovate and network tend to get promoted faster.