Posted on 11 April 2024

Don’t “Think Before You Print”: Why eco email signature messages miss the mark

If you still add please consider the environment before printing this email to your signature, you are solving a problem almost nobody has, and you are doing it in the noisiest place in the message.

This was true in 2014. It is more true in 2026. People do not print emails. They read them on phones. The line survives because it was copied from someone else’s footer a decade ago and never questioned.

What people are actually asking

If you landed here after seeing please consider the environment before printing this email, you are not looking for a climate strategy. You have seen the line, you find it odd, and you want a straight answer: should it be there?

No. Take it out.

Why the signature is the wrong place

An email signature has a job: name, role, a way to reply, a logo that does not arrive as a paperclip. That is already a lot of HTML for Outlook and Gmail to keep intact on reply. Extra sermons make the layout taller, the file heavier, and the brand look like it was assembled from leftover legal text.

The environment line fails on three counts:

Nobody was going to print it

Printing an email is now a conscious choice, usually for a contract, a boarding pass, or a worksheet. The people who do that already know paper exists. A footer will not convert them, and it will not stop them.

The line itself uses energy

Every extra sentence is stored, synced, and rendered on every copy of the thread. Jeff Bennion made this point in 2014: a short disclaimer looks tiny until you multiply it by every business email, every day. The eco footer is the same trick. You add bytes in the name of saving paper that was not going to be used.

The expensive part of email is not the printer. It is sending, storing, and displaying mail at scale, including oversized signatures with attached logos. If you care about waste, stop attaching the logo as a file and stop padding the footer.

It talks down to the reader

The tone is the real damage. The line says: I am greener than you, and I assume you were about to waste paper. Recipients notice. Some find it funny. More find it patronising. A signature is not a lecture hall.

What to do instead

• Delete the line. A cleaner signature is the whole fix.
• Send fewer, smaller emails. Link to a file instead of attaching a 12MB PDF. Do not CC the building.
• Host images. A remote logo is downloaded once and cached. An attached image001.png is copied into every mailbox.
• Keep legal text short. UK companies need certain details on business emails. That is not the same as a paragraph of confidentiality theatre. See UK email signature legal requirements and disclaimer wording if you actually need one.

Should I put “please consider the environment” in my email signature?

No. It does not stop printing, it adds clutter, and it makes the sender sound like a 2009 template. If your organisation wants a sustainability message, put it on the website or in a campaign you chose, not on every reply to a customer who asked a simple question.

Does “think before you print” belong under the logo?

Same answer. It is leftover letterhead thinking. The logo, the name, and a working link do more for the brand than a recycled eco slogan.

If you want a signature that stays short, hosted, and readable, design one in Mirosign. We will not add an environment lecture for you.