These Come From Trees – Saving Trees through Social Media Marketing

Pete Kazanjy is a Silicon Valley geek with a mission – reducing consumer waste paper through the strategic placement of stickers reminding us that “These Come from Trees.”

The idea behind TCFT is that the right message – a helpful, non-threatening reminder – delivered at the right time can meaningfully reduce consumer waste paper consumption.

What I love about TCFT is that it’s an experiment in viral marketing, using social media apps such as Facebook and Flickr to spread the word about the project and proliferate TCFT stickers everywhere they are needed, such as here:

These Come From Trees Saving Trees through Social Media Marketing

Place TCFT stickers as a friendly reminder:

in public bathrooms
on fast food napkin dispensers
by your office printer

Check out these stats:

Testing shows a “These Come From Trees” sticker on a paper towel dispenser reduces paper towel consumption by ~15%
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
A single “These Come From Trees” sticker can save around a tree’s worth of paper, every year
Roughly 50,000 fast food restaurants in the US
200,00 gas stations in the US
14,000 McDonalds’ in the US
There are 10,000 Starbucks in the US

Can marketing environmental messages through social networking sites work?

Absolutely.

These Come From Trees on Facebook has 300 members and growing. As of today, they’ve been dugg on Digg 84 times. And in less than a year, they’ve sent out over 10,000 stickers. If each sticker saves 100 lbs of paper a year, that’s 1 million lbs of paper, or 10,000 trees.

Great job, Pete!

[tags]These Come From Trees, TCFT, Pete Kazanjy, green 2.0, green marketing, viral marketing, social media marketing, lorna li[/tags]

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