Print an e-mail and save a forest!

For a while now, many e-mails sent by individuals and businesses have urged the recipient to consider whether printing the e-mail is absolutely necessary. Now the WWF has taken it a step further by introducing a new file format (the wwf) which can’t be printed and urges people to “save as wwf, save a tree”. But is this line of thinking logical?

The WWF’s youtube video of their campaign can be found here. It is a well-produced video and its goal is to greatly reduce the “destruction” of forests for paper.

However, others have pointed out that very little of paper production comes from native forests, rather from renewable, recyclable, and sustainable forests. Printing e-mails actually encourages jobs in the forestry sector with very little or no environmental consequences as forests are generally replanted as they are cut down.

The full arguments can be found here, including an “alternative” tagline that could be attached to your e-mail.

So, over to your students…to print or not to print?