These Come From Trees in Germany: A Twitpic

Was checking out mentions of "These Come From Trees" on Twitter today (here's the search I was using), and lo and behold, saw this great TwitPic post by Justin Küblbeck of Germany. Apparently some enterprising person in Germany posted these about...including on a toilet paper dispenser. That's commitment! Wow.

We don't do as good a job as we could in documenting the international locales that TCFT stickers end up at, but suffice it to say, roughly 15% of sticker purchases are from outside the US, even non-english speaking countries.

Off the top of my head, I can recall the Canada, UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Indonesia, Australia, and Brazil. I should go back and look at the Paypal reports and Google Analytics traffic, and do a post on the international footprint to date...

We haven't had anyone localize These Come From Trees stickers into German, like they have been for Italian and Arabic, but if anyone would like to, let us know, and we're happy to provide the Photoshop originals!

Wow! 29% paper towel use reduction at Hunt Valley Elementary School!

About a year ago, an enterprising teacher from Hunt Valley Elementary School, named Ben James reached out to us to participate in the These Come From Trees K - 12 Education Challenge, and to apply for some complimentary These Come From Trees stickers for posting up around at their school.

Ben had seen TCFT stickers posted at the Denver Aiport (yay Denver TCFT-ers!), and was inspired to investigate on his own. He ended up posting TCFT stickers on all the paper towel dispensers in all the classrooms and bathrooms at Hunt Valley Elementary (a member of the Fairfax County School District in Virginia) and emailed the other teachers letting them know what the stickers were for, and to introduce them to the kids. (That's a picture of the dispenser in Ben's classroom.)

A year later...18 trees and $840 in paper towels saved!

Well, wouldn't you know it, Ben emailed us the other day to let us know that they were doing a post-analysis on their conservation efforts, in particular, looking at how their paper towel conservation worked.

The year before Ben posted the TCFT stickers, Hunt Valley used 129 cases of paper towels--with eight rolls per case and six pounds per roll, that's 6200 pounds of paper!

This year, the school ended up only using 95 rolls--34 fewer than last year! Even better, 34 cases of paper towels equals out to 1800 pounds of paper towels. With about 100 pounds of paper coming out of a given paper pulp tree, that means that Hunt Valley saved around 18 trees worth of paper in one year, with the help of TCFT stickers. Not bad, guys!

What's more, according to Dotty Lin, Assistant Principal at Hunt Valley, that savings of 34 cases meant real dollars and cents too... $840 in total they didn't have to spend on paper towels. Not bad for 50 stickers--which were free to Hunt Valley as a K - 12 educational organization. (But even if they had paid...$10 for 50 stickers turned into $840 in paper towel savings in a year...wow! Not a bad deal!)

Real world testing, shared.

This well-documented case study was great news, because our own testing that provided the "15%" number that we quote on the site was a pretty lightweight, week-long test at a coffee shop--and while we've wanted to do a more meaningful study to gauge impact of TCFT stickers, well, the day job keeps getting in the way!

This data from the folks at Hunt Valley is great proof of These Come From Trees stickers contributing to a successful conservation strategy, whether at a elementary school, high school, higher education institution, or business organization!

I would encourage you to forward this blog post to your facilities team at your office, school, and so on, and see if they can't use TCFT stickers to reduce unintentional overuse of paper towels at your place of work / study!

University of Alaska Fairbanks Chilling Paper Towel Waste with TCFT Stickers

I've never been to Alaska, though I very much want to go. There's something really attractive about the wild beauty of the last true frontier of the US.

In the meantime, though, it seems that I can take some pride in the fact that a whole passel of These Come From Trees stickers will be making their way up to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

UAF already has a large Go Green Initiative, complete with its own website. When the head of dining services at the University saw a TCFT sticker up in a bathroom in his local coffee shop (posted, no doubt, by a guerrilla TCFT participant!), he ended up back on this blog, where he was able to read up on the the long (and growing!) list of Universities (and businesses, and K-12 schools!) deploying TCFT stickers.

He sent an email to the head of facilities for the whole University, and just like that, UAF will be posting TCFT stickers on all of their paper towel dispensers, throughout the University. How cool is that?

Talk about a perfect case study of how "It only takes one"--a single sticker in the right place, in front of the right person can totally blow things wide open!

When I finally make it up to Alaska, it'll make me happy to know that TCFT is already thriving up there in the great white north.

West Virginia University Deploying 1200 These Come From Trees Stickers Across Campus

I've been trying to do a better job of posting examples of These Come From Trees being used in the wild, whether by individuals, companies, or higher education institutions.

One big success story that I've been remiss in noting has been West Virginia University. They were one of the earlier examples of a higher ed organization making a concerted effort to deploy stickers across their entire campus, and I want to recognize their efforts!

Barbara Angeletti, a facilities coordinator at West Virgina University, was tipped off by some stickers she saw up around campus, doubtless posted by an enterprising student doing his part. She started off picking up 200 stickers to deploy, and keeps coming back for more, currently up to 1200 stickers across campus.

Barbara noted to us that this is just one part of their larger initiative to green the campus, and that they're tracking things to see what sort of impact their various programs make. We'll be looking forward to hearing more about it!

Tulane Medical School Deploying These Come From Trees Stickers

Tulane Medical School out in New Orleans, Louisiana is doing their part to save trees while saving lives.

Niels Olson, class of 2009, bought up a couple hundred These Come From Trees stickers for use at the medical school, and has reported that they've been gladly welcomed onto campus, and even better, match nicely with the green of the University's logo. Great fit!

They join dozens of other institutes of higher education like Stanford, and others in helping students, faculty, and staff to pause for a second and consider the resource they're about to consume.

Read more about other organizations, from companies to K-12 schools, and, of course, lots of individuals, who are spreading the word!

Stanford Blood Center Uses These Come From Trees Sticker to Stanch Paper Towel Waste

I like to keep an eye on which organizations show up in the TCFT inbox, and the other day, one that's near and dear to my heart showed up.

The Stanford Blood Center is a subsidiary of Stanford Medical School, and has a couple locations around Palo Alto. It's also where I give blood as often as my schedule allows (every 8 weeks or so).

I like to do apheresis, where they pull your blood out, run it through a centrifuge to filter out plasma and platelets, which are retained, and then return your red blood cells. The plasma and platelets are really important for burn victims, folks with immune problems, newborns, etc.

One reason why I really like apheresis, is that even though it takes longer (an hour and a half), you get more "bang for your buck" than just donating a pint of whole blood (30 minutes), because an hour's worth of aphersis can result in something like 10x the amount of "blood product" as a pint of whole blood.

As folks who are familiar with These Come From Trees, I'm a fan of technology that force-multiplies individual effort. And plus, I just sit there doing email one-handed on the free wifi they provide at the Blood Center, and time flies! They have a location that's right down the street from VMware, so it's a slam dunk for me.

Anyway, I digrees. Michelle Harmon, a staffer at the Blood Center, recently ran across a TCFT sticker in the ladies' room at the Tied House Brewery in downtown San Jose. She liked the sticker, remembered the TheseComeFromTress.com domain, and ended up on the blog, where she read all about, and loved what she saw.

So she ended up ordering 200 stickers for deploying across their three locations to help make the Blood Center a greener place. How's that for a happy ending?

It Only Takes One

The other day I blogged about how someone had noticed that there were These Come From Trees stickers up in the Boston Logan Airport bathrooms.

What I hadn't realized that the person who blogged it, Tamara Krinsky, had her own initiative she was popularizing: "Change the Margins" or a campaign to mildly expand the default margins on Microsoft Word documents to marginally reduce the use of paper. And Tamara's campaign has gotten some great publicity, as has her blog, which helped These Come From Trees when she blogged about the project.

It Only Takes One...The Right One

But what's especially fascinating to me, is that this kind of serendipity, the fact that some nameless These Come From Trees enthusiast out in Boston took the initiative, and as a result, Tamara Krinsky saw it, and spread it with her platform.

This is what's so inspiring to me: while I blog here and there about organizations that are picking up thousands of stickers to deploy in their bathrooms, it's the individual These Come From Trees team members out there, spreading the stickers onesie, twosie across the the world who are doing the amazing work.

You never know when that one sticker you put up in Starbucks, or your favorite restaurant, will be read by the Director of Facilities of some Fortune 500 company, or a reporter, or someone with the power to broadcast the message louder and and broader than ever.