SanDisk Deploying These Come From Trees Stickers at Campus

The other day a pretty impressive brand name showed up in the "These Come From Trees" paypal email bin: SanDisk.

For those of you who need refreshing, SanDisk makes the memory cards that make your and my cell phones run. I have an 8GB SanDisk chip in my mini HD video camera I got recently, and I love it!

One of SanDisk's facilities staff picked up 200 These Come From Trees stickers, and when emailed asking what they're planning on doing with them, he mentioned that they are going to deploy them across the campus as part of a larger greening intitiative they're working on.

Very cool!

You can see more examples of organizations using These Come From Trees stickers to conserve paper at their offices here.

Heart on Your Sleeve Clothing [Hearts] These Come From Trees

The other day I was quickly looking through the purchases of These Come From Trees stickers (as I typically do, before shooting the download off to our pick n pack) to see what domain names showed up in the purchasers, and my eye was caught by "@heartonyoursleeve.ca".

I gave a looksee at the website, and sure enough it turns out to be a "sustainable" boutique based in Toronto, Canada that focuses on locally produced, renewable clothing.

I dropped a quick note to the purchaser, owner of Heart on Your Sleeve, Natalie Stephenson, regarding what she intended to do with the stickers. Turns out, she's going to hand them out to people who shop at her boutique with each receipt, asking them to spread the word, in that people who shop at her store are likely to be the best placed to help evangelize.

What it comes down to is that Natalie is helping to turbocharge the concept of "it only takes one."

That is, a single sticker in the right place at the right time, gets the message in front of someone who can really do something to move the message on its way.

Natalie's doing her part to spread the word not just to individuals, but people who themselves are well placed to broadly spread the message. And that's pretty great.

These Come From Trees and New Roads

Ben from New Roads School took us up on our offer about complimentary These Come From Trees stickers for educational institutions.

All we asked in exchange was that he clear it with his facilities department, and that he send us some pictures when he had them up.

Well, the first pictures showed up today, and I'm happy to say this is the first time I've seen a TCFT sticker up in a chemistry lab!

Right on Ben!

Flyte Enterprise Cleaning Services Helping Their Clients with These Come From Trees Stickers

Flyte Enterprise of British Columbia, Canada is a janitorial and cleaning services company that provides products and services to hundreds of businesses around British Columbia.

But Darin Sherpit, Flyte's head of marketing, sees their business less about just selling products to businesses, but instead, providing them with the services they need to have a safe, healthy workplace.
One part of that is focusing on keeping things "green," whether that means using less harmful cleaning agents, or helping his clients reduce waste .

Darin found the These Come From Trees project by googling around, and approached us to see about being able to purchase a large number of stickers for deploying at all the bathrooms they service, and on all the paper towel dispensers that they sell.

If you think about this for a minute, this is a pretty impressive statement. The traditional business model of janitorial service companies is to charge for the service, and the products deployed at their clients, plus a markup. So on the face of it, deploying These Come From Trees stickers in clients bathrooms wouldn't seem to be in the best interest of a janitorial services company.

This was exactly the sort of conflict of interest that we had thought about when first conceiving of the project: the right people to be deploying this message are Georgia Pacific and Kimberly Clark--right on the paper towel dispenser!

It certainly is impressive to see Flyte looking long term in their relationships with their clients, and as a part of that, deploying These Come From Trees stickers to help their clients cut down on overuse of paper towels.

Palo Alto Medical Foundation Deploying 1000 These Come From Trees Stickers

We've talked in the past about how it's not just coffee shops, bars, and restaurants that can benefit from "These Come From Trees" stickers, but commercial enterprises too.

The other day, we were emailed by Melissa Stai of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, a large healthcare organization based in the California Bay Area.

As Melissa told it, the Foundation is always looking for ways to make its operations greener and more efficient, and when she was walking around the Stanford campus, she had seen a These Come From Trees sticker up in a departmental bathroom, and wanted to bring the benefits of These Come From Trees stickers to the Foundation.

PAMF has more than 50 buildings around the Bay Area, so they decided to buy 1000 These Come From Trees stickers to make sure they would get great coverage and get the most value out of their conservation efforts!

If there are any Palo Alto Medical Foundation clients out there, and the next time you swing by, you see a These Come From Trees sticker up in a bathroom, snap a pic with your cameraphone and email us!

"Pause Points" and Conservation

Melissa over at the Better Living blog stumbled onto the These Come From Trees project the other day, and has some great commentary on These Come From Trees and the concept of a "pause point" or a moment wherein a person is brought back to the moment to make them briefly think about what they're about to do, rather than just mindlessly going about it.

She had recently read the book "Mindless Eating," which is all about how the human body and mind, and the restaurant industry, is geared to encourage accidental, "mindless" overeating.

Melissa drew the connection between the techniques related in that book to dial back unintentional overconsumption, and those that she implements in her own life (she puts her paper towels way up on top of the fridge to make it more difficult to get to, thus ensuring she really needs one before she grabs one), and the sort of gentle reminder provided by These Come From Trees stickers to create a "pause point."

She does a great job of summing it up here:

We all know that paper napkins and towels come from trees, just like we know we shouldn't eat an entire bag of potato chips. But not all of us are mindful all the time, and these stickers create a pause point for us - they provide a physical, visual cue which remind us to stop and think before proceeding with our intended action.

I also love her comments on the design and phrasing of the sticker, in that that was something we put a LOT of time and effort into:

I like the way the message is phrased; it's not saying "Hey, I can't believe you didn't bring your own cloth napkins, jerk, why are you destroying the environment by using these disposables?" Instead, it's just a gentle reminder to consider the resources consumed in the item about to be used.

Great comments Melissa. A friend of mine had recently read "Mindless Eating" and told me about it, but I didn't even draw the connection. Thanks for connecting the dots!

Check out the rest of the post here.

Kisco Senior Living Deploying 500 These Come From Trees Stickers

Kisco Senior Living is the award-winning operator of more than two dozen senior living communities all over the United States.

Kisco recently purchased 500 These Come From Trees stickers to help them reduce paper waste in their bathrooms at their facilities.

As Kathleen Davis of Kisco puts it, "We are going to put these stickers on paper towel dispensers, as part of a broader greening initiative."

In addition to the These Come From Trees deployment, and an exhaustive recycling program, Kisco's accounts payable department has implemented a 100% paperless invoices, with scanning and email substituted in place, as has the payroll department.

It's great to see These Come From Trees gaining traction in the most unexpected places. We've always talked about how organizations of all sizes that operate bathrooms, cafeterias, and copiers, among other paper-consuming projects, could find value in These Come From Trees stickers.

I never even thought about how senior living communities are a great fit, but in retrospect, it makes perfect sense, for much of the same reasons why offices and dorms make sense: lots of people in one place, lots of paper towels, and repeated messaging.

We're really excited to see how this work out for Kisco, and what sort of paper reduction they see!