The latest fashion is to include ‘Please consider the environment before printing this email’ on the bottom of emails. To me the most likely effect of this is to simply make the printed email take up more paper than it otherwise would (along with those mile-long legal disclaimers), while giving the sender a perfectly pointless warm fuzzy glow of false environmental stewardship. Surely either someone needs to print an email out (and find a place to file it), or they don’t? There’s probably not a huge amount of indecision present when hovering over the ‘print’ button.
Surely a far more effective exhortation would be ‘if you need to print this email, please use recycled paper. Preferably paper that has already been used once.’
When cleaning out old files, I store paper that has only been used on one side and store it for re-use in the printer. Same goes for a lot of that business junk mail that turns up, uninvited, including the crazy Australia Post invoices they insist on sending account holders (duplicating receipts handed out in the post office when the transaction was made). This paper is then used to print out records kept for my own purposes. I don’t give a rat’s toss if stuff in my filing cabinets has something redundant printed on the back of it.
And except for extensive note-taking purposes, when I need miles of lines to produce readable handwriting, I never buy notepads. Enough envelopes roll in here to make a track to the moon and back, and they’re the ideal size for writing notes onto. And that’s what bulldog clips were invented for, to keep them in line. A few years ago I remember someone having a dig because I used envelopes for phonecall notes. My parents did it and I do it and it has always seemed like a normal, sensible thing to do. It was a revelation that someone would view envelope notes as a bit uncool. I have a rellie that also recycles envelopes for their original purpose – a bit of sticky tape, and it’s right to travel through the postal system again. Why not? Maybe not for a job application and sending out to customers, but surely a re-used envelope is good enough for every other purpose.
The ultimate question is; all those people who have ‘Please consider the environment before printing this email’ written on their emails – do they all use recycled toilet paper, or do they insist on pristine paper straight from a woodchip mill?