I joined this company around 2 months back and since then I was very depressed with the wastage of paper here. I saw the wastage of paper while printing documents, while usage of tissues in washrooms by colleagues as well as by house-keeping staff. Though the HR feels proud to put "Save Paper Save Trees" as his email signatures but when implementation comes he might top the list in wasting papers. Wastage of paper indirectly harms trees and in turn harms atmosphere.

Seeing the same exercise for about a month, I decided to take a step forward and start encouraging colleagues to stop/lessen the use of paper tissues in washrooms. You can't spread the message verbally to a large audience, so I printed 2 notices for encouraging people to lessen their soft tissues usage and use hand dryers* in washrooms. I asked the house keeping guys to paste this poster in the washrooms at my floors with the purpose of noticing people’s reaction to extend the same in all washrooms across the building. To my surprise, the house-keeping guy was smart, he got the notice photocopied and put those in all the washrooms.

It got a mixed reaction, some people appreciate the work and instead suggested using handkerchiefs in pace of hand-dryers but some was there to make fun of it. Some showed their calligraphic talents on the notices and some told me that "Jaante hai ki tum bahut bade samaaj-sevak ho...".

As everything needs time to make a sizable effect, it isn't an exception. But believe me that in long term, it will have a positive effect over more people. As an analysis, if there are 10 washrooms in a building and approximately 40 persons use a washroom on an average. If your notice can take attention of a mere 10%**, 4 persons start contributing in saving trees. Assuming that a person use 5*** tissues daily on an average, then you are saving 10*4*5 = 200 tissues daily. This not only save your operational expenditure but you will also get a positive feeling of saving trees.

I have talked to some of my friend in some bigger organization and they are also ready to shoot a mail to their admin/HR to implement the same in their offices :-)

So guys, what are you waiting for? Use HANDKERCHIEFS and save TREES.

* You may argue that hand dryer will use electricity, which is generated using thermal power but that costs much less trees than soft tissues.

** Lately, this figure will grow for sure.

*** It is the minimum number of tissues, an average person uses daily.