# "Consider the environment before printing this email" - why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 1, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576 "2010-12-01T19:25:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/41 "2010-12-02T20:56:15Z")
Actually, people do do business by IM, especially for communications within organizations, which is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s little different from using the telephone. In fact, the messaging functions of services like the SDMB and Facebook are perfect examples of this. They are closed systems in which contacts are controlled by users. If you want to indicate a desire for a quick response on Facebook, you send an IM/chat message. If you are fine with delayed responses, you use the e-mail-like messaging function. Internal IM functions tied to an organization’s internal E-mail system are exactly like this, as is the telephone. Bottom line, if you want a quick response, you use the telephone or an equivalent (face-to-face communication or IM). If you are satisfied with a message sitting unopened or unresponded to for an indeterminate period of time, or indeed completely lost in the clutter, you use E-mail. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/42 "2010-12-02T21:44:24Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Bottom line, if you want a quick response, you use the telephone or an equivalent (face-to-face communication or IM). If you are satisfied with a message sitting unopened or unresponded to for an indeterminate period of time, or indeed completely lost in the clutter, you use E-mail. I very deliberately do not have our (optional) corporate IM installed, for the same reason I leave the task tray email notification off. I don’t want to be bothered most of the time whem I’m working at my PC. If it’s really important, drop by my cube, call me, or text me. “Text me?” you ask? Yes, it’s different. If someone takes the time to text me from our archaic work phones (“gH mnO W A pqR dE.@?”) then they’re welcome to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/43 "2010-12-02T21:54:31Z")
Emails get printed at my work literally every single day. Some of it is quite sensitive information about our company, and it is important that the email printouts are only displayed in appropriate places. I see that “consider the environment before printing” line in literally every corporate email I come across. Keep in mind stuff like wikileaks is built on intercepting emails. Not usually hard copies, but if one footnote could help people remember to keep sensitive information where it belongs, it’s quite worth the ink it takes to print it. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/44 "2010-12-03T01:38:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Quoth **acsenray** :And if people started using IMs extensively instead of e-mails, then you’d get spam there, instead. I mean, really, if you’re including as spam messages that you’ve signed up to receive, then you’re going to be spammed by any method of communication you ever use. > > Quoth **MLS** :Now, see, this is an object lesson of why people should be saving everything electronically _instead_ of using hardcopies. Going to the offsite storage and digging up a lost file is a Hell of a lot easier if it’s electronic than if it’s stacks of papers. And the different regarding complicated databases isn’t that you have to have complicated databases if you’re using electronic files: You don’t. You can pass around electronic documents that everyone does their thing with just as easily as you can for paper copies. The difference is that, with paper copies, you _can’t_ do the complicated databases, even when you’d really like to and it would make your job a lot easier. We do use a fair amount of software and electronic processing for some of our work. But in order to totally use electronic files we’d have to scan or convert every document that arrived. Everything comes in a different format – PDFs, emails, spreadsheets, .tifs, paper files, word processing attachments, etc. It’s a small company, eight people including the boss and his wife. We have no IT department other than the husband of one employee who maintains the computer network and hardware. We’ve looked and actually tried out some commercial software for another portion of the work, to no avail. Like I said, our processes wouldn’t scale up to anything larger. I’m just trying to make the point that there are times when a printed document is actually more efficient rather than trying to digitize everything. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/45 "2010-12-03T01:58:11Z")
**Chronos** , do you see what happened when I and MLS quoted your post? It would be great if you used the attribution function native to the quote tags rather than adding that “quoth” stuff yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/46 "2010-12-03T05:49:59Z")
How is what happened with my quotes any different than what would happen with the automatically-parsed quotes? In either event, the quotes are going to get stripped. And the attribution isn’t native to the quote tags, but to the quote buttons. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/47 "2010-12-03T06:45:04Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > 1. To me, “spam” isn’t just unsolicited commercial messages or scams. It’s also the numerous lists I have been added to over time for a variety of reasons – I once bought something online, I paid a bill online, I signed up on some service (like SDMB), I made some casual contact who added me to some list, etc. Furthermore, as a consequence of my job, I am on multiple public relations/news/promotional lists, some of them which are still relevant to me some of which aren’t. It’s way too much trouble to unsubscribe from lists, so I just go through and delete dozens of unread messages every day or two. I just take a few moments and set up labels and filters for these things. If I get stuff from a list I may want to read, I can have it never even hit my inbox - it will be marked read and instantly stored in the correct folder for later reading, or whatever filter I want. And if I don’t want it at all, I hit spam with no guilt whatsoever. It’s MY inbox. My boss used to print every e-mail but it was totally CYA. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/48 "2010-12-03T06:56:50Z")
I print out emails because I do not have a smartphone or access to a computer all day every day and sometimes I need information that was in an email. So they get printed out and stored in the appropriate folder or binder until they are no longer needed and they get recycled or shredded as necessary. ---
**Author:** ![ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ed)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/49 "2010-12-03T13:28:45Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Yes, because nobody ever does any business by IM. If they did, as you’d like, then that would change. Uh, you’re kidding, right? I mean, email dominates overall, I’m sure. But I’ve worked for Fortune 500 companies, a prominent law firm, and companies that have law firms as clients, and instant messaging was the primary form of day to day communication in all of them - especially when supporting customers/clients. This was true as far back as 2002-2004 at least, when we were using Lotus Sametime at Bank of America. Back then, you used email to wage war with other departments (using CC/BCC to try and get other people in trouble while “on the record”) but you used IM to actually get work done. The last two places I’ve worked, we don’t even have phones. People who really, really want a phone can use Skype, but the rest of us just IM constantly. Spam is not a problem, since most everyone I know is set to “only allow messages from people I add to my list”. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/50 "2010-12-03T14:34:14Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I print out emails because I do not have a smartphone or access to a computer all day every day and sometimes I need information that was in an email. So they get printed out and stored in the appropriate folder or binder until they are no longer needed and they get recycled or shredded as necessary. This is confusing. Do you have access to the folders all day every day? ---
**Author:** ![kapri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kapri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kapri)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/51 "2010-12-03T14:46:48Z")
Geez, these references to “old people” printing out emails are making me feel like an ancient geezer. I’m in my early 50s and have been using a computer since 1987. I don’t think I ever printed out emails regularly. The only reason I ever would is because I am a writer and editor, and sometimes people send me chapters or stories to edit, and to save my eyes and get an idea of how they “really” look–that is, black on white, printed out, like in a book–I would print them out, but do the actual editing on the screen. In the past few years I’ve probably printed out about six emails, and I think in every case after printing them out I’ve tossed them, realizing there was no reason to print them. The only time it’s helpful to me is when the email outlines a step-by-step procedure that I have to do on my computer; I’ll put the email on my desk and follow it on my computer. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/52 "2010-12-03T15:21:11Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > This is confusing. Do you have access to the folders all day every day? For all intents and purposes, yes because I plan ahead and include the necessary ones in my collection of materials needed for the day. A laptop does not fit into a backpack as easily as a folder so it doesn’t get to come along. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/53 "2010-12-03T16:18:45Z")
> **[List of Google April Fools' Day jokes | Gmail Paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_hoaxes#Gmail_Paper)** > > At about 10:00 pm, Pacific time (where Google has its headquarters) on March 30, 2007, Google changed the login page for Gmail to announce a new service called Gmail Paper. The service offered to allow users of Google's free webmail service to add e-mails to a "Paper Archive", which Google would print (on "94% post-consumer organic soybean sputum") and mail via traditional post. The service would be free, supported by bold, red advertisements printed on the back of the printed messages. Image att... ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/54 "2010-12-03T16:59:07Z")
I worked for the Government. And you don’t think we’re going to let common sense keep us from following procedures, do you? Emails managed to elude a procedure of hard copy storage. Probably because our leaders never used email in the first place. But let me tell you about SISU’s. A SISU is a big form that records all of the positions you have in the facility and tells you who was working in that position. It also tells you who was working some miscellaneous job that wasn’t a regular position (although some of these supposedly miscellaneous jobs were worked every day for decades). And it tells you who was off that day and why they were off. Each eight hour shift filled out a SISU for their shift and then at the end of the day, the three SISU’s were combined into one daily SISU, which theoretically showed where everyone had been that day. We used to do all this on paper. But back in the eighties we started switching the system over to computers. But the procedures were written way back when (they were already long established when I started working back in 1982) and they have never been revised to reflect the reality of computerization. So every eight hours, we enter all of this information into the computer. And then we print a copy of it. Then at the end of the day, we compile the daily report on the computer. And we print a copy of that. Then we put all of the paper copies into a file cabinet. They’re kept there for a month and then they are transferred to longterm storage, where they are theoretically kept for five years. Except that nobody ever bothers to clear out long-term storage so they are actually kept there pretty much forever (I’ve personally seen records that were written in the thirties). (As a sidenote, if anyone wants to actually find out where somebody was working on a certain day, we just call it up on the computer. Nobody ever looks up anything in the original reports.) Now the SISU for a single shift can be twenty pages long. Even a short SISU is five pages long. And we do this at each of the seventy two facilities in our department. And they are plenty of other departments in our state. And forty-nine other states. And of course this is just the SISU - only one of the numerous items of paperwork we generate each day. So you can start to imagine the literal mountain of paperwork that the government has in storage. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/55 "2010-12-03T18:26:01Z")
Another reason for printing stuff is that it can be easier to work with that way. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/56 "2010-12-03T19:13:44Z")
Another reason to print emails is because it helps you to look busy: La la la, I’m printing this important email, la la la walking to the printer to get my printed email. Tra la la walking back to my desk la la-la la-la. Now I’m sitting at my desk studying this printout - look how busy I am! La la la busy busy busy. Furrowing my brow because I am thinking hard about this email I’m reading - busy busy busy furrow furrow furrow la la la. Ooh, lunchtime already? ---
**Author:** ![Karen\_Lingel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karen_lingel/32/18649_2.png) [@Karen\_Lingel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karen_Lingel)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/57 "2010-12-03T19:27:08Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Several times in my recent career, I have received an email reminding me to consider the environment before printing that e-mail, and at least one co-worker’s signature also, in addition, stated that “Not every email needs to be printed.” Huh. My company’s standard predefined email “signature” includes an admonishment to print, but you are completely correct, what kind of idiot these days considers printing emails unless there is a totally compelling need? I am removing this useless admonishment right now. -k- ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576/58 "2010-12-03T23:01:13Z")
> [@Philster](#): > > Help the environment by using paper and real xmas trees. Without a need for paper forests, and with no need for xmas tree farms, they’ll all wind up as flat, crappy housing developments or condo complexes and eventually be toured by the most annoying and sometimes shallow TV show known to mankind: House Hunters. > > Print away and buy a real tree. Do some things that sustain forests and farmland. > . +1 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/consider-the-environment-before-printing-this-email-why/562576.md?page=2)