English Reader

You've probably seen the message, "Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail," at the end of e-mails you receive.

Adding a green message to your e-mail signature can be an effective way to draw notice. After all, the people you're e-mailing know you. If you care about the environment, they may wonder what more they can do as well.

Here's a story to illustrate my point. Michael, that's my husband in case you didn' know, added an e-mail signature like the one above to his work e-mails. Others in his department started doing the same. In a staff meeting, the organizer said something like, "Well, I didn't print out an agenda for everyone this time because of all that save-the-paper messages in your e-mails. I wrote it on the board instead."

That's a small, but great change. E-mail signatures can help people think. Now here's something for you to think about:

Do you actually refer back to those e-mails you print? How often can you make PDFs of documents instead of printing them?

Here are some e-mail signatures I came up with just for you to consider:

•If you hug a tree, you'll be hugged back twice. Please think about not printing this e-mail.

•Trees like you, so please wink back by not printing this e-mail.

•Love a tree, don't hit print.

•Make sense, not waste. Don't hit print.

•Ask me why you should think twice before printing this e-mail.

•Does e-mail make us print more than we did before?

•You're too smart to print this e-mail.

•Lower your impact today by not printing this e-mail.

•Even recycled paper takes energy to make. Do you really need to print this e-mail?

If you have a green e-mail signature, please tell us about it.