Stephanie Fessler doesn't drive a hybrid car, compost her orange peels or bring her own reusable cloth bags to the supermarket.
But two months ago, Fessler joined countless other businesspeople in doing one environmental good deed daily. At the bottom of every e-mail she sends, she includes this message: "Save Trees. Print only when necessary."
"This is something I can contribute in my crazy busy life," said Fessler, 29, who works for a Los Angeles public relations firm. "It reminds other people about environmental awareness and reminds me on a daily basis."
The trend took off in March, when the popular environmental website TreeHugger.com encouraged readers to add the don't-print plea to their automatic e-mail signatures.
Since then, the message has spread beyond the granola-and-Birkenstock crowd to the cubicle armies of corporate America. Architects, airline employees and even button-down accountants have gotten in on the act, as have companies such as media giant News Corp.
The parent of Fox Television offers employees a catchy admonition that riffs on the company's "Cool Change" environmental initiative: "Be cool, consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to."
At Bovis Lend Lease, a 10,000-person worldwide project management and construction company, so many employees began adopting the please-don't-print line that executives agreed to grant a sole exception to the company's rule against personalized e-mail signatures. And as many as 1,000 accountants and consultants at Deloitte & Touche have adopted some version of the line, one executive said.
"It's a testament to how cool green is that this particular message is appearing in so many business communications," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
Environmentalists say the don't-print message has genuine merit. Despite 20th century predictions of a paperless office, Americans use enough sheets every year to build a 10-foot-high wall that would stretch from New York to Tokyo and beyond, according to GreenPrint Technologies, which sells software to eliminate unnecessary pages before printing.
At the same time, an estimated 97 billion e-mails whisk through cyberspace every day. Technology trackers say more e-mails invariably mean more printouts, if for no other reason than that printing has become a habit. Last year, 53% of people surveyed told research firm IDC that they printed more because of e-mail. That means more paper, and more energy to shred or recycle it.
