Entrepeneur, man-about-town and sweetheart of the local rodeo Pete Kazanjy was bothered by all the waste created by people taking more paper towels than they needed to dry their hands. He did the math: you really only need two. (He has lots of extra brain power to devote to things like this; apparently he doesn’t spend an hour every morning trying to tie his shoes like I do.) But nagging doesn’t do any good–he figured the best way was to simply provide a small trigger to activate people’s better natures.
So he made a little sticker like the one you see here and tested it at a local coffee shop, and lo and behold: it cut paper towel use by 15%, which over the course of a year is like a whole forest or something. He’s selling high-quality, smear-proof stickers for people to go out and place in their local hand-drying spots (with the owner’s permission, naturally). Head over to TheseComeFromTrees.com and pick up a few–if you do, Mother Nature promises to stop sending hurricanes and floods.
Aram! Thanks for the shoutout.
Just a couple points of clarification. I was alerted to this “unintential overuse” of napkins and paper towels not by being annoyed at other people, but by watching myself, and saying “jeez, I certainly have a lot of napkins left over at In N Out every time I go…why?” Same with paper towels, I noticed that I had a tendency to keep pulling them out till I subconsciously had a “goodly” amount in my hands. But when I actually paid attention, the point of diminishing returns on towels is two–so why the hell was I using more.
The stickers are being sold at-cost, with any overage going to the Sierra Club.
Thanks for the shoutout again, Aram!