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!

Eloqua Software Deploying These Come From Trees Stickers

Eloqua makes marketing demand generation software that my company, VMware, uses.

Well, it was a total "small world" moment when Joel Rothman who works at Eloqua, emailed in after buying a stack of These Come From Trees stickers, asking if I still worked at VMware.

Apparently I had mentioned this in a previous blog post (which, wow Joel, you certainly read far back into the TCFT blog archives!) that I worked at VMware, and Joel knew that we were a client, and reached out.

The cool thing is, I just circled back with Joel, to see how things are going at Eloqua with their These Come From Trees stickers, and sure enough, he says they're up in all the bathrooms at the offices, and that people like them, and they're seeing an impact.

Let's hear it for low tech solutions helping out even high tech companies!

Logan Airport? Wow! Beantown Loves TCFT

I just saw this in my Google Alerts for "These Come From Trees".

Tamara Kinsky flew in to Boston's Logan Airport, and when she went to the wash up in the bathroom...well...guess what:

After an exhausting 6 a.m. flight to Boston this past Friday, I decided to freshen up in the bathroom before heading out to rental car hell. Every paper towel dispenser had a sticker slapped on it that said "Remember...these come from trees." Got me to immediately cut down on my paper towel consumption.

Pretty cool! Glad to see that they work in airports too! Read all about Tamara's thoughts on the project in the rest of her post!

Clorox Deploying 300 These Come From Trees Stickers

Clorox is a big household cleaning agent and chemical producer--an idea that doesn't really strike most people as being all that "green."

However, more and more they've been changing their tune it seems. They recently launched a line of plant-derived cleaning products called "Green Works" and have been sponsoring interesting "cleaning" and "greening" projects lately, like this really neat "dirt removal mural" project in San Francisco.

Within the Clorox's organization they're making changes too. They have a newly formed "Environmental Sustainability Office," located at their offices in Oakland, California.

Their office approached us, and ended up purchasing 300 These Come From Trees stickers to deploy at their corporate campuses all over the bay area.

Good thing These Come From Trees stickers are laminated to hold up to cleaning, because something tells me the Clorox bathrooms are pretty spic and span!

Let's hear it for a big old enterprise stretching its green muscles!