"Please consider the environment before printing this email"

Posted by Roo - 09/03/07 at 08:03:19 pm

I keep seeing this sage advice at the bottom of emails. Do people honestly do this? Am I badly out of touch, or would other people also consider that even thinking about printing out email a mind-numbingly silly thing to do?

It got me wondering how much paper I’ve saved by not even thinking about printing my emails this year. Since I started using GMail (in September 2004), I have archived 9,687 emails, or about 12 per day. Those are the good ones. I actually ignored a further 1,994 unread spam just in the last 30 days, but let’s discount them.

12 personal emails per day, and my work email account is at least twice that busy as well, so let’s conservatively say I get an average 36 non-junk emails per day. I have not idea if this is close. It’s probably an under-estimate. I reckon an average email could be conveniently printed on one page. Actually, repeatedly printing threaded conversations would get annoying, but maybe I’d print off the new bit and add it to the pile for that conversation. Even thinking about this is making me feel sick the the mess it would generate.

Since my imaginary black and white laser printer (because you’re mad if you think I’m buying ink cartridges for this) doesn’t do duplex, I reckon I’d need at least 12,816 A4 sheets per year. That’s more than 25 reams of paper. No thank you.

Update: most amused to see that the idea of printing every email was actually GMail’s april fools prank this year.

By the way: using a mail footer which reminds people about wastefully printing out email is just one of fifty way to ‘change the world for a fiver‘ (a cool book which is also available directly from the publisher’s shop).

23 Comments »

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  1. I can imagine a happy little dot-matrix sat in the corner, with a few boxes of fan-folded paper beneath it, regularly clattering away, tearing off each email as it arrives.

    It would be noisy. Very noisy.

    Comment by Nick O'Leary — March 10, 2007 #

  2. Ironically one of our clients uses this message on the base of every email. I print out very few emails but in this case there was a matrix of TODO’s which I figured would be useful to print out. Unfortunately when printing not only did it output the required matrix, but also a second page with the message “Please consider the environment before printing this email”

    doh!!!

    Comment by Al — March 11, 2007 #

  3. I also only print mails when it’s necessary.
    Why printing documents as they can be saved on the computer and despatched by mail.

    Comment by Phil — May 16, 2007 #

  4. I have just been asked to program this onto the bottom of all our outgoing messages. It would be ironic if this additional information in the footer caused the printer to throw an additional page…

    Comment by Stephen — June 13, 2007 #

  5. I recently installed a system that converts Fax’s to pdf’s and delivers them by email to end user. Then we removed the fax machine. Now… the user recieves the email/fax, prints it out and goes and gives it to someone (who incedently also has email). - I did ask why they done this, and i the answer i was given was… “well… its a fax”

    Comment by Jay — June 14, 2007 #

  6. Every little helps. There are people who will happily print off an email or attachment without thinking of the environment. Some are older people still getting used to the idea that just because it’s not in your hand it doesn’t mean you don’t have it. I’m all for education and the opening of clouded retina eyes to the wonderful world of technology. Saying that, some documents are important enough to be transferred to hard copy, say, legal documents, so no I wouldn’t consider that a mind-numbingly silly thing to consider, but consider it might make us do, at least until we get blind to the normality of it and need something else to awaken our responsibilities.

    Comment by lou — July 12, 2007 #

  7. It’s true though - people DO print out a lot of emails, just b/c they can’t be bothered to write a note on a post-it or whatever… I think a little reminder at the bottom of the email just that - a little reminder about how we all affect the environment. Cheers to you, that you consider it moronic to print an email, but let me tell you - I see it all the time.

    Comment by jjbigs — July 25, 2007 #

  8. I used to work for a recruitment company - in the good old days we got CVs by post, then scanned them and imported them into a recruitment database of candidates. We had a dozy sub office that weren’t too computer savvy, so after years of them scanning paper CVs I then found out they were receiving emailed CVs, printing them out and then scanning them in!! When I showed them how to speed this up by about 95%, they were amazed!!! Oh the joy…

    Comment by Stuart Noton — August 9, 2007 #

  9. Has anyone ever sat down and worked out the effect of paper on the environment?
    Surely paper from a sustained forest that is then buried in landfill could be considered a form of carbon sequestration…

    Comment by Dave — August 20, 2007 #

  10. Dave: I’d agree, if it was first encased in something which would stop it biodegrading. :-)

    Comment by Roo — September 4, 2007 #

  11. Much like Maddox’s approach to vegetarians, I get a strong urge to print out multiple copies of emails bearing this message, just out of spite.

    Regarding carbon sequestration, biodegrading paper emits methane which in the UK is captured and used to generate electricity.

    Comment by Rob Fisher — November 14, 2007 #

  12. You would not believe how much paper is wasted in a law firm environment. The majority of lawyers print out every single email and put in a “chron file”. That message may seen obvious, but having seen it myself, its absolutely unbeleiveable how much waste is generated “just becuase”.

    Comment by Paper Saver — December 21, 2007 #

  13. If you are that bothered by it, then simply don’t read the very last line of your email. It shouldn’t inconvenience you and it simply put the thought in your mind to conserve. Cheers to you for conserving by not having to think about it, but the rest of the world needs a simple reminder.

    Comment by Your Printer — January 31, 2008 #

  14. Hello “Your Printer”. (I’m not entirely sure how comfortable I am with anonymous comments by the way, but that’s a conversation for another time).

    I didn’t say I wanted people to stop including the reminder (did I?). I said that printing every email was a silly thing to do. As I’m seeing in the comments, there are a lot of silly people in the world (many of them lawyers, it would seem) who need that reminder, and even then may do it regardless.

    In any case, I’m more amused than “bothered” by it.

    Comment by Roo — January 31, 2008 #

  15. Hi ya’ll,

    All this is pretty hypocritical.
    If we were to use hemp for paper instead of trees, there would be no such discussion.

    All this ’save the trees, don’t print’ is just dealing with the symptoms, not the cause.
    Stop using trees for paper and find a better solution in hemp.

    Comment by Linda — March 10, 2008 #

  16. “I keep seeing this sage advice at the bottom of emails. Do people honestly do this?”

    Recently, as part of our company’s ISO14000 certification, we were requested to include the said ‘environmental’ signature in our emails.

    Comment by Chris — May 15, 2008 #

  17. Required by ISO14000 eh? That’s interesting. Thanks.

    Comment by Roo — May 15, 2008 #

  18. How can all of you be so uninformed?
    Once forest land is no longer usefull for growing trees (ie paper products) it will be sold for development. Tell me how green it will be then? Morons.

    Comment by TS — May 19, 2008 #

  19. Chris — May 15 at 9:11 a.m. — I am trying to find rights to use an environmental signature at the college — did ISO 14000 provide logos and taglines, or refer you to a resource? Thank you — Kathy
    PS — To TS — the only moron is one not willing to consider alternatives to a limited perspective.

    Comment by Kathy — May 20, 2008 #

  20. Printing out emails is not totally unknown. In a previous job, my father used to have a secretary who would print his emails at various points during the day. He would write on them (always with a green pen) and she would type the replies.

    These days he uses Outlook in the conventional way at work, but my mum still prints personal mail for him at home.

    Comment by Pete — May 20, 2008 #

  21. Linda: No. It’s still a waste of electricity and natural resources, even if it’s hemp paper.

    If hemp were used to replace all those things it can replace, we’d need a couple of extra planets just to grow hemp.

    Comment by Sunnan — July 13, 2008 #

  22. Where did that little slogan originate?

    Comment by J — July 31, 2008 #

  23. Greenwashing at it’s best.

    Comment by Green Lantern — August 21, 2008 #

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