Email is the greatest; in fact, we don't know how we survived without it. It's an environmentalist's dream - all of our communications are digital & tree-free! But that's not true, is it? Many of us are still in the habit of printing out our emails, just in case we want to reference it later. This is almost never necessary, and a new trend has sprouted on the internet to combat it.

You might have seen it already on the email signature of one of your contacts. It's a tree with a winding road, and a message: "Please consider the environment before printing this email." We believe this ever so subtle guilt-trip has saved at least several reams of paper so far.

If your email program can handle rich text or html, then you can have the complete signature. The picture of the tree that is being used in this case is actually the letter P using the Webdings font. Then, simply write the message and make the whole thing green. Now you are all set!

Rebecca says: It seems that Gmail isn't letting me use the rich text in the signature. I might have to go without color and tree and simply write the message. Gmail should know better! Did anyone catch their April Fool's joke? It's very appropriate for today's topic: Introducing Gmail Paper.