Image: Courtesy of Kazanjy on Flickr Creative Commons
Last week, in a coffee shop bathroom, a sticker on the paper towel dispenser scowled at me accusingly. The white decal with perky green letters read, 鈥淩emember, these come from trees鈥. I quickly trashed the wad of papers towels crumpled in my hand and left the bathroom feeling guilty鈥攁nd strangely curious at a sticker鈥檚 power. I did a little research.
Turns out, Pete Kazanjy, a Silicon Valley product manager/designer, conceived the sticker idea after dining at fast food joint In-N-Out Burger. Kazanjy noticed that said restaurant鈥檚 centrally located napkin dispensers (i.e., not near any of the tables) prompted people to grab a clump of paper napkins before sitting, use one, maybe two, then throw away the rest.
He was curious in what other situations people 鈥渁ccidentally, unintentionally鈥 wasted paper. His next brainstorm came in a public restroom: How many sheets does it actually take to get hands dry after a post-bathroom wash? Kazanjy tried his typical process, pulling four sheets and drying his hands. Then, he inspected; he鈥檇 used only 30% of each towel. He washed again, this time carefully extracting just a single paper.
鈥淥ne towel, which then got like totally wet, did more or less the same job as three or four,鈥 he wrote in the second post of his blog, . 鈥淚t didn鈥檛 take longer. My hands weren鈥檛 colder. Nothing. So then I thought 鈥業鈥檒l splurge鈥 and tested using two. At this point, my hands were REALLY dry, really fast. So then I tried three. At that point, I couldn鈥檛 even tell the difference between two and three towels. Not to mention four.鈥 The 鈥淭hese come from trees鈥 stickers were born.
Since March 2007, roughly 50,000 or so have been distributed鈥攁nd they鈥檙e proving useful. According to Kazanjy鈥檚 , a single sticker on a paper towel dispenser reduces consumption from that machine by about 15%. Also, a single sticker can save approximately one tree鈥檚 worth of paper (~100 pounds) every year.
He鈥檚 selling the stickers too, but not for a profit. Ten bucks buys 50, money Kazanjy says is to cover the cost of the durable, laminated stickers themselves, postage and fulfillment. Any overage he donates to the . Though I personally don't have any scientific proof of how much difference these stickers make, I can say that since seeing one a week ago, I鈥檝e been much more conscious of my paper consumption.
