I'll be the first to admit I'm kinda a geek when it comes to using technology to do things day to day. You can see that on this project, in that it has its own blog, uses Paypal for payment processing, Google Analytics to see who's coming and going, Facebook to spread the word virally, and Technorati to see who's linking to this blog.
One of the big pieces of technology I was hoping to leverage is tagging on the photo sharing site Flickr. One of my favorite things on Flickr is the RSS feed I have of the tag "thisisbroken". People all over the world can post up a picture of something that's poorly designed, poorly thought out, poorly executed, or what have you, and tag it "thisisbroken" and I have subscribed to an RSS feed of all those pictures. I get to see the collective wisdom of people who are involved enough (or, hey, I'll admit it, geeky enough) to take a picture of something like that, and share it.
Similarly, I wanted These Come From Trees to be able to do that as well. As you can see, there's a Flickr widget on the right side bar of this blog that has a feed of the most recent pics tagged with "TCFT" (conveniently enough, These Come From Trees is the only project using that tag! It's good to be an early adopter sometimes....).
Well, up till now these pictures had mainly been me taking snaps of These Come From Trees stickers I had put up, using my Treo, and then text messaging them to Flickr.
Today, we had a milestone! Someone besides me tagged a picture "TCFT"! In this case, it was a picture of a trashcan overflowing with paper towels, taken in what looks like Denmark, by a gentleman from Germany:
I find that really cool! I hope to see more pictures showing up on Flickr with the "TCFT" tag in the future!
These Come From Trees Sticker
Quick Facts about "These Come From Trees"
- Check out our "welcome post" to learn about what inspired this project.
- Eco-minded Citizens: See what you can do with These Come From Trees!
- K-12 Schools, check out our Education Challenge
- Hundreds of Businesses Using These Come From Trees Stickers
- Proven up to 29% paper use reduction
- Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TCFromTrees
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- A single "These Come From Trees" sticker can save around a tree's worth of paper, every year
- More than 50,000 stickers distributed since 3/07
- Laminated stickers hold up to washing.
- A typical fast food restaurant with two bathrooms can use up to 2000 pounds of paper towels a year
- The average coffee shop uses 1000 pounds of paper towels a year
- A single tree produces around 100 pounds of paper
- Roughly 50,000 fast food restaurants in the US
- 200,000 gas stations in the US
- 14,000 McDonalds' in the US
- 10,000 Starbucks in the US
Saturday, June 2, 2007
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33 comments:
"TCFT" is excellent work. A karmic rent to you. Shannon
Interesting read
http://secrettolife.blogspot.com/
This is a good piece of citizen journalism. You are doing the right thing by bringing these environmental problems to light. Too oftem people believe that one person can't make a difference, but you've shown that one little sticker can. Good for you.
Like your idea, your project, and your site. Thinking about getting some of those stickers.
Thanks.
KingfisherJ
Try going green in your own bathrooms at home. It takes a little thought, but is easily do-able in a safe, hygienic way!
Umm... wouldn't making more stickers use up more trees?
Hooobooy Tony, you get to be that guy on this post, huh?
I would highly encourage anyone who is going advance the argument "these stickers are made of paper? What a hypocrite!" to read the welcome post, linked to at top, and the other background posts.
To sum it up: one itty bitty sticker saves about a two pounds of paper towels a week thanks to people here and there taking one fewer towel, as encouraged by the sticker.
This is a pretty great return on investment of paper resources, don't you think, Tony?
TCFT...what a perfect idea!
simple, effective, brilliant.
i wish you much success with this project.
Looks like the restroom cleaning crew is on strike...
Nice establishment... that image says a lot about the business.
People actually read the sticker and follow it? It's as useful as having speed limit signs when there are no cops on the road.
Tony, if you read up on the background of this project, it's less a case of "speed limit signs with no cops" and more like the digital speed limit signs that have radar guns in them that tell you how fast you're going.
Your point assumes that people are actually thinking about their usage, and purposefully doing it anyway.
This is not the point of this project. The point is to get the user to think for a split second, to devote just a little bit of thought to something that would otherwise go by with thinking.
And yes, according to our testing (coffee shops, commercial offices) the sticker does appear to have an impact, to the tune of about %15 of paper towel usage.
I invite you to read the backstory of this project in past posts, and reconsider your comparison.
I'll have to start storing my camera in my purse to capture some of these sorts of images for TCFT. I see things constantly that I'd love to snap a photo of, but I don't always have my camera, and I imagine some people would be put off if I yanked my camera out in a public bathroom...
@jessica,
I like to use my camera phone. Usually a. there's no one in the bathroom and b. even if there were, the sinks are pretty well removed from any sort of area where pic snapping would be *really* suspect.
However, you raise a good point, and probably the best way to deal with it is just best judgment and discretion.
Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you very much guys. Very interesting ideas in your blog! ))
hi this is an awesome site. i want to buy some stickers. but i live in mexico. if i translated this into spanish could i order some in spanish too?
big thumbs up on this site. i saw one of the stickers in a bathroom in san jose (hell on earth)
hit me back uzureau on the gmail.
Erik
Here you go James: http://stanford.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2249650553
That's the Facebook Group.
I've returned! I was hoping for some new content, but I guess reading some older posts will have to do. =P
I just wanted to share some info with you guys about my summer internship. I'm working for a small non-profit called Sustainable Harvest International. They work with farmers in Central America and teach them sustainable, organic forms of farming to help stop slash and burn, thereby saving rainforests, and making the farmers and their families economically independent. It seems way better to me to do things this way than to just go in and try to plant trees somewhere. Find sources of forest destruction, and instead of trying to halt it, find better solutions!
Anyway, if you want to read more information about SHI...
www.sustainableharvest.org
Oh! And we're also being featured on Stonyfield yogurt lids. Stonyfield is donating $40,000 to three non-profits based on voting, so if you want to help some forests out, you can vote here:
http://www.stonyfield.com/specialOffers/BidWithYourLid/
Plus, you can get a coupon for a free cup of yogurt online, and then use that to mail in and vote and get free prizes. :)
/end babble. :)
I saw a sticker at the Rose & Crown in Palo Alto and I'm glad to learn about TCFT. There's a group working on exactly this at the big auction company where I work, and I hope we can use these stickers on our campus. Keep up the good work!
Silly question...why does the bathroom in the picture look like Denmark?
Hi there!
You'd probably love the quote on "Trees" on my blog action project...check it out!
Julian
www.ijulian.blogspot.com
Another interesting view on global warming...
http://rightatrivier.blogspot.com/
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