Green Signature Drafts
Working for a sustainable design consultant, as I do, I am continually exposed to exciting and interesting individuals with progressive views and ideas. The climate change crisis is real, and I’m excited to be helping in some small way to affect architectural design in a positive and sustainable way. But the sustainable message is bubbling over into my colleagues’ email signatures, as evidenced by a recent email, which carried the following message after the author’s signoff:
“please consider the environment before printing this message.”
What a great idea, to follow every email message with a smug, self-satisfied, holier-than-thou little dig at your own client, I thought! That’s not condescending at all! So this evening I sat down to draft my very own “green email signature”. I’m very excited about my drafts so far:- Like, don’t print this, OK?
- Printing this message kills trees. Print is murder!
- Please consider filing this email in an email folder and refraining from printing it, since that would be redundant and a waste of space, time and paper. Just make sure you back up your hard drive, you idiot.
- Please respond to this email as soon as possible, as I am soon unplugging all my electrical devices and moving to the woods. And this should go without saying, but you should NOT print this message, since the more you print, the less woods I will have left to live in. Again, please hurry.
- You know pal, you really should think about what you’re doing there, with your mouse cursor on the “print” button; don’t you realize that trees are a precious and beautiful resource? You already have the material, right there in front of your oil-thirsty face, in digital format. You should read it on your monitor instead of wasting precious paper to print out what you already have, you heartless bastard! I can’t believe you could be so stupid, you PAPER WASTER! Of course, by reading it on your monitor you’re running your computer which consumes about 450 watts of power while it’s running whereas you could print this out on a few sheets of paper and power down. Hmmm. Let me think about this for a second. I’ve got it! I’ll just bet you don’t do two-sided printing, thereby wasting TWICE as much paper as I do when I print things duplex (even though I almost never, ever, print things, because I am pleased to consider the environment before doing so)! Oh you climate change accelerator, you! I hate you! Yes, far better that you read this on screen, especially since you don’t have a duplex printer. Come to think of it, you should really get a duplex printer; I can’t believe you don’t have one of those! Jesus, you are a resource hogging pig! Aren’t you glad you have me to help you think about these issues? By the way, how many miles per gallon do you get with you car? You DO drive a hybrid, don’t you? Put that hamburger DOWN, dammit! LISTEN TO ME!!
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39 comments
Under normal circumstances, why would people want to print out e-mails?
You’re trying to apply logic here, Perry. It’s been my experience that many folks — particularly non-computer-savvy types — tend to print out emails and their attachments as a matter of course. I’ve seen this in the last three office environments I’ve worked in, including my current one, ironically enough. Still, I can’t bring myself to put an environmental message in my email signature regarding this stuff. Haven’t figured out how to do it without sounding like a putz.
Okay, and you just gave me the laugh back. Thanks! May I humbly suggest as an e-mail signature the one that I have thought about but am not brave enough to do quite yet: “Spinning plates for (company) since 1989”? Plates (as long as they are not paper — oh, God; don’t make me do the energy calculations for running the dishwasher versus recycling) being so non-controversial.
And by the way, I vote for e-signature #3. Because it uses the word idiot, which is so caring and Boulder-ish.
You know what the worst part of my signature is Rob? It’s in Outlook. BLAM - adding insult to injury.
The windig font doesn’t work unless you messages are in HTML reader, so if I am not paying attention, it reads “p before printing, please consider the environment” . . . Hold on a minute - that’s not what you have written in this blog. Is there someone ELSE out there who stolen my signature? Stay in Boulder a little longer and you’ll have the same one. You’re still not completely affected by that place yet if you’re still posting like this.
This is silly - “Please consider the environement…” is a friendly reminder to think about whether you really need to print out the whole email or whether you might not…also - it makes you think to at least select only the important info to print rather than the whole chain…it is not treating clients like idiots, it is showing that as a company you support the green cause and hope that they do too.
Dear ‘s n’,
I recommend you re-read the first statement in your comment. This whole post was half rant and half joke and it should be obvious to anyone with half a sense of humor.
When you consider that each ton of printer toner is made from 463 burned cow carcasses I think everone has missed the real issue here. Your “green email signature” really needs give the cows a voice too! (See Moovement for Bovine Rights official website)
Reducing Carbon is a very seriopus and emotional area. Our experience is that you need to motivate people not tell them. “Turn the lights off ” doesn’t work. Be kind (to people and the environment)
We still find many sceptics (I don’t believe Climate Change is happening),
still more scinics ( I dont care about climate change)
Even more people who say “its happening but it wasn’t caused by humans”
BUT NO one who can argue that there is one simple answer REDUCING CARBON. Cos’ not only does it help the environmnet but it helps us to save money too.
In our office we insist any required printing for internal use is on the back of paper we receive in the mail. We use it again before recycling.
I’m an old croney myself and not therefore used to electronic media like the rest of you. Its the olddies that require printing.
My view and that of the thousands we have researched is this.
ASK NICELY, SUGGEST NICELY, GIVE A REASON THEY WILL AGREE WITH and then youll GET WHAT YOU WANT. so:
Please think carefully before you print off this e mail or any others. Some people find it more difficult not to have a printed version, so if that’s you fine but please think about the environment. AND SAVE YOURSELF SOME MONEY TOO. If you do print e mails then why not use the back of a letter or mail shot you are about to throw away so you reuse the paper and save money.
Oh please dont forget to recycle the paper when you eventually finish with it.
Thanks from, me the trees, your boss for saving money and everyone in the world for doing just a little to help in Reducing Carbon.
For more free ideas on Reducing Carbon call 0044 845 388 5019 UK office time please.
I’m going to have to adopt “Printing this message kills trees. Print is murder!” as my tagline. thanks for the tip.
So, i printed this page 37 times to share it around the office. just kidding. I’m using the final sig, myself.
So, I printed this page 37 times to share it around the office. just kidding.
Me? I’m using the 4th sig.
wow, i waste pixels too. Sorry for the repeat, yet varied, post. i think my keyboard revolted.
how about adding “Please lower the brightness on your monitor before reading this to save electricity” before the email!
I absolutely love all the ideas! Thanks. :)
People are idiots. Paper comes from tree farms and thus don’t affect the larger ecosystem. Reading electronic mail (especially on my dual LCD monitors running from a Dell at work) wastes far more electricity than paper. My email signature reads “Please consider the environment and print this email,
instead of viewing it on your 450watt energy wasting computer.”
[…] why not use some the excellent alternatives from Green Signature Drafts, one has over 1,000 characters (which will mean something later). This article (2007-03-29) was […]
So when I first saw the ‘environmental signature’ tag, my first thought was that it was the most condescending thing I’d ever seen.
Who prints their emails anyway? Funny that, now my job is to help a company become more ‘green’ and one of our projects might be to require addition of something like this to everyone’s email signature… And because of a record retention policy, many people do print their emails because they don’t know how to save them on their computer… patronizing signature, here I come!
haha, This is hillarious, I thought I was the only person in the world who thought this was snotty.
When I first saw that “please consider the environment…” signature I was like what asses, do you really think everyone out there is a child who needs parenting?
However, when I would share my grief with people I would get looks like I’m a crazy maniac, which on second thought is prolly deserved.
Oh man. The CEO of my company put that signature at the end of all of his emails about a year ago, and now it’s spreading around the office. I can’t be the only one in the office who finds this condescending, but no one has mentioned it so far.
But, I’m glad others are finding humor in it as well.
A good collections of the footers is gathered here:
http://carbon-free.of-cour.se/green-email-signatures/
I think the person who wrote this blog is a dipshit.
Very bold assessment, Chris. Thanks for sharing!
Guys I work in an office which is governed my bunch of oldies, who take numerous prints per day.
they take 50 page print, then read, mark the mistakes, edit it on the soft copy and then attach it to the mail. after that will take a print of the sent mail.
for this whole procedure on an avg they waste 100 page per day .
My boss’s table is stacked with hell lot of pages, coz he takes print of everyother mail he gets ( sick bastered) and every month he cleans em by tearing unnecessay pages. Wat an ASS HOLE
And the worst part is “He never regrets…..”
I don’t get it. “Half rant and half joke”? Which part is rant and which part is joke? I’d just leave it alone, but I keep finding links to this meaningless blog post instead of actual lists of genuinely thoughtful ways of raising awareness of the environmental impact of excessive printing. It’s quite annoying.
As I said, it should be obvious to anyone with half a sense of humor which is which. It’s not a meaningless blog post, it’s a very witty and funny piece about the sanctimonious undertones to so many of these green email signatures. Read the rest of the comments, read the articles in the various national newspapers that picked this post up for quotation, and you will see that many people agree with me. Many people, who — like myself — actually work in the sustainable community.
If you’re looking for quality info on environmental impacts of printing, they are a Google search away. I seriously douby my little rant is getting in the way of your search but if you’r really stuck, let m eknow and I’ll try and help you out.
How about……..”Please don’t print this……Paper sucks!”
[…] via- rumblestrip […]
If I were going to add one to my e-mail, it would say:
Money doesn’t grow on trees, but paper does! Please consider the environment (and your budget) before printing e-mail.
How about:
Go ahead and print this out. It’s okay! The wood and paper industry plants 1.7 million new trees EVERY DAY. Since 1987 U.S. forests have increased by 12 million acres to 755 million nationwide – about the same as 100 years ago (www.abundantforests.org).
Matt- unfortunately, though it would be nice, the paper industry doesn’t actually plant trees- they plant seeds.
Also, Rob, why is it so sanctimonious to ask someone to please think about anything? Seems pretty harmless. Maybe the problem is that everyone is constantly trying to find a reason to be insulted. Just a thought.
Ashley: it’s sanctimonious because it presumes the reader HASN’T thought about it.
I have a colleague in an office that is priting anything, any mail. Sometimes she just needs to give a price to a costumer and she prints all the conversation, sometimes like 4-5 pages or even more.
[…] why not use some the excellent alternatives from Green Signature Drafts, one has over 1,000 characters (which will mean something later). This article (2007-03-29) was […]
If you really love the environment, then don’t add a green message. Keep your signature short too. Because more than often the “green reminder” becomes the only reason why a one page email becomes two. You need to trust others that they will make a good judgement. Don’t presume that people don’t “think before printing” the email. Give people the benefit of the doubt, please~!
This is great. I work in the suburbs and live in the city. In a 250 person office, I am the only person that regularly rides my bike to work, rides the metro & bus on the other days. Everyone else drives, even though they live a lot closer than I do. And the woman who sits behind me prints out every email she gets and sticks it in a manila folder and it drives me nuts. My thought is that the people who have thought about it will like the signature - because they identify with it (like I do). The people who haven’t thought about it will find it sanctimonious, because they love to hate us bike riding, carbon-fearing, digital-era greenies. (and yes, I’m outraged, look at what’s happening to our world).
Hi Liz,
Well, we’ll have to disagree then. I am a bike riding carbon-fearing greenie such as yourself, and I DO FIND THE GREEN SIGS ANNOYING AND SANCTIMONIOUS. I do energy efficiency research for a National Laboratory. I get it. I identify with the message. And I find it extremely snotty to place that message in business communications. I too go nuts when people automatically print out email and pdf files (especially when they sit there and read them next to their computer!), but that’s not the point. Try and see it from their point of view. Apparently it’s hard for greenies like us to do so.
Silly reaction to a good initiative. be aware and watch for the environment. It’s not only the message but the way you react to it.
Btw this topic is using a lot of trees according to google.
Ed,
Watch for the environment? Like is it sneaking up behind me? “Hey Rob, check your six, it’s the environment!”
One thing you got right Ed is that it’s a silly reaction. So sad that more people can’t lighten up and see the joke behind it all. ANd for the record, I AM aware, and I AM conscious of what’s happening, and I DO consider the environment, and I hardly print ANYTHING.
How is “this topic using a lot of trees”? I’d love to hear all about how my blog post — created and distributed entirely w/o paper — is wasting paper. Sheesh.
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