SSL

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

Submitted by Dabitch on Thu, 05/22/2008 - 13:43.
in

Have you been seeing these little things in the footer of emails recently too?

P     Please consider the environment before printing this email.

Here's the thing though, I haven't printed an email since 1997. So I have another question for you email-green-peeps. What type of electricity do you use? Are your computers on at all times? Is your companies server hosted in the cheapest possible colocation space, where you're probably using un-eco friendly electricity 24/7 all year, or have you found a green alternative? Adland is hosted at memset, a carbon neutral company, because - duh - I actually think about these things and worry about my carbon footprint which includes worrying about this servers impact on our environment. I guess what I'm saying is, next time you sent one of those silly little things out in your email, consider what that email travels through. Being green isn't only about saving paper.


Technorati Tags:
Bookmark/Search this post with:
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Propeller
  • Reddit
  • Magnoliacom
  • Newsvine
  • Furl
  • Facebook
Average: 5 (1 vote)
Submitted by wisdumb on Thu, 05/22/2008 - 18:01.

I don't understand the snarkiness in your post. Of course using less electricity is a good thing, but that is no reason to knock an awareness campaign. Maybe a majority of e-mails don't get printed anyway, but many might and if this little message at the bottom saves a few sheets a paper, why not? Also, more importantly, it serves to remind people about the issue. However, bragging about your server and pointing fingers at others doesn't help the cause... and btw, following your logic, how many non-carbon neutral servers are involved in the chain of servers that deliver your hosted page to your readers? Are all the embedded videos on your page coming from carbon-neutral servers? Would a 'Hypocrite - thy names is Adland' bumper sticker printed on 100% post-consumer product help you to play nice?

Submitted by Dabitch on Thu, 05/22/2008 - 23:56.

Hypocrite, really ? No, wait, really, did you seriously just go there are are you poking as much fun as I am?

Cliff notes on what I dislike about this "awareness campaign": I think wasting extra bytes in email only serve to make you feel better, and if you care one iota about the environment you should try actually doing something instead. That's really all I wanted anyone to take from that. Like I said, there's more to being green than just saving paper.

But hey, if people want to easy way out - join the campaign! It's easy, all you have to do is use webdings in your email (and here we'll work on the assumption that everyone has webdings font and a mailreader that cares to parse HTML). Stick this in your signature file: 

< font color=”#006600″ face=”Webdings” size=”+3″ >P< /font >
< font color=”#006600″ > < strong >
Please consider the environment before printing this email.< /strong >< /font >

a whole lot of crap about henna, lima beans and my efforts to leave a small carbon footprint deleted as I realize it doesn't help explain the missed point in my original post.

* fixed the code line for Andreas-Udd. I don't know why my < code > tag is cranky with me today. But the idea os to use wingdings for this signature.

Submitted by Andreas-Udd on Fri, 05/23/2008 - 12:55.

Another irony is that the extra line in these emails often cause the printer to require a second piece of paper for it. It's an annoying and pointless "campaign".

Your show and tell of the code is screwed up though, just one long line.

Submitted by TDD on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 02:08.

Not printing an email is so much easier than going out and planting trees to reforest an area; however, the latter accomplishes something, the former does not. Like many 'awareness campaigns' this one implies something that just isn't true: the forests are in danger of disappearing due to our use of paper. "Please consider the environment before printing this email" is a solution need of a problem.

Some Canadian forest industry facts:

- Canada is the world's leading producer and exporter of newsprint
- Canada is the world's largest exporter of wood pulp
- Canada exports more than 80% of its printing and writing paper production
- By law, all forests harvested on Canada's public lands must be replaced
- Foresters replace harvested areas using either natural or artificial regeneration
- The United States is by far the largest buyer of Canadian forest products
- Canada has 10% of the world's forests
- Canada has 402.1 million hectares of wooded lands
- Wooded land represents 41.1% of Canada's total surface area
- Annually, Canada harvests 0.3% of its commercial forest area
- In 2003, an estimated 378 746 hectares were planted
- In 2003, an estimated 17 651 hectares were seeded
- In 2004, Canada was the world's largest forest-product exporter

Sustainable Forest Management in Canada

Submitted by TDD on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 02:21.

How much paper can be made from a tree? Or, alternatively, how many trees are needed to make a given amount of paper?

Submitted by Dabitch on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 10:39.

I just got an email with the sigfile;

CarbonFriendly company

We are committed to enhancing the environment so THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT this email. Maybe make a paper airplane? Or an origami tyrannosaurus rex...that takes a lot of thinking.