“What do you know about this symbol? It seems to appear on various organisations’ e-mails. Where does it come from? Is it an official symbol? Can anyone use it?”The short answer: Anyone can use it. It’s not an official symbol. It’s gained use by popular appeal.
Is it worth using? That’s an entirely different question…
How did this whole thing start?
I’ve yet to find the first recorded use. Unlikely that I will! Anyone help out? It got a boost from TreeHugger’s Take Action Eco-Tip in Email Signature: Help us Start a Meme! (2007-03-12). From the comments there, it seems likely both text and image were around for a while before, as the tip only mentions starting a meme by,
Add the following lines to your email signature: “Eco-Tip: Printing emails is usually a waste. Make this tip go viral, add it to your email signature.” There’s an optional third line for the really devoted TreeHugger fans: “For more eco-tips, visit www.TreeHugger.com”.
So… to use or not to use?
Lots of people really do print emails (not even considering attachments). Because: they can’t read them properly on screen; they’ve been emailed a meeting agenda; they don’t carry a laptop every where; it’s easier to write notes on paper than an email; they read print faster than on screen; there’s some rule in their office about having a paper copy of everything; they’re not sure that electronic stuff really won’t get destroyed too easily. We’re a long way from the paperless office!
Printing emails uses paper, ink and electricity. So anything that helps remind people not to print emails may be a good thing. Colour printing costs more than black and white; perhaps we shouldn’t use this symbol or text in green! Especially where you’ve got a printer that automatically prints in colour, just because there’s something in colour to print. And don’t type it in bold, that uses more ink. (Does it use enough extra for that to really mean anything?)
Get your own symbol
Pretty much anyone using Windows has it. The symbol itself – a tree and winding road – comes from Microsoft’s Webdings font, released in 1997 with Internet Explorer 4. (There’s a page about the minor update of Webdings, with a little more history. It forms part of the “Community” characters in the font.
Using Word, PowerPoint (in a text box), etc.: Insert > Symbol ; change the font to Webdings; locate the symbol in the pane of characters; select it and insert into your document. Change the text colour to whatever seems appropriate, though green is an obvious choice! However, before you change the colour, read the printing issues above and below.
If you want some HTML to cut and paste into emails, try this:
<font color="#006600" face="Webdings" size="+3">P</font><font color="#006600"> <strong>Please consider the environment before printing this email.</strong></font>
(The quote marks should all be ordinary double quotes, and don’t respell color as colour.)
