Please don't print me, or write me even

I have long been intrinsically uncomfortable with people having in ones e-mail signature: "please consider the environment, please don't print" - often plus a green image of a tree.

It has nothing to do with the intention (although, the effectiveness of having it is questionable), rather the cost to the environment of adding that small message onto every single e-mail.

What has made me bring this up now is having just read a blog by a technology journalist, Cliff Saran, complaining about receiving unsolicited 7MB attachments (an entirely fair complaint). His main point, idiotic PRs aside, is: "[he now] will have to store that 7 Mbyte of attachments for several years, on discs and tapes, which consume electricity, need constant upgrading and require greater amounts of storage space. There is an environmental impact." See: www.computerweekly.com/blogs/it-fud-blog/

Now I once worked out that the additional ‘environmental message’ is around 10 bytes. Apparently in 2oo8, around 210 billion e-mails were sent each day. Of course 70% was considered spam - so that is 63 billion e-mails not spam. Let's say that only 1% of e-mails carry the message, therefore that equates to around 630 million - which (taking the 10 bytes figure) amounts to 6.3 extra GBs per day, or 2, 299GB per annum.

Now I'm unable to calculate what that impact is on the environment, or what impact the actual message carries to mitigate any negative impact. But I know that I print things off because I need to - either to proof read (I simply cannot do it on screen) or because I need that info away from a computer and can't read it on a mobile device.

Regardless of what can and can't be done for the environment, it seems to me that people who believe that, to coin a phrase: "every little helps" are doing quite simply the opposite. It was a trend for a while, but it's time must have come and there are better and more efficient ways of monitoring printing and waste.