Green Thing Blog

You know those disclaimers that turn up on the bottom of emails: "Paper doesn't grow on trees. Please think before you print this email."? Well Ad agency BBH decided the world needed something much more imaginative and effective, so they came up with the i.Saw.

This spoof device - the world's first USB-powered chainsaw - led users to a downloadable app which makes a loud, angry tree-cutting noise every time you're about to print. It acts like an alarm-clock conscience on your PC to remind you to think before you print.

It's a great example of something that spreads online by being both interesting and useful. It's interesting as a piece of media (the spoof iSaw site got 1.5m visits, was written up in Wired and Gizmondo and created a buzz on Twitter and Reddit and the like) and also useful as a piece of software - it really does force you to think about what you're printing and whether you really need to.

The concept is brilliant, although in reality it does get a wee bit annoying and seems to be triggered by commands other than 'Cmd P', so the novelty does wear off a bit (although apprently this is a bug that's being fixed).

That said it's still clever, witty and ingenious and I wish we'd thought of it ;-) And the more computers its on, the more paper that gets saved - so download it here and spread the word.

[Spotted on BBH Labs via Mel Exon]

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Sainsbury's announced this month their pledge to plant 2 million trees over the next 5 years with the Woodland Trust. To mark the momentous occasion, they built the tiniest shop ever, in a tree.

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