Rainforest desktop app could curb wasteful office printing

In a large workplace, in an urban city, it is easy for workers to forget the impact of wasting resources such as paper, but a culture that ignores unnecessary printing contributes massively to the destruction of rainforests. Now, the Deforested Desktop app, made by Brazilian charity Green Nation, will act as a constant reminder to office employees of the environmental impact of their actions — by displaying a dwindling rainforest, the demise of which correlates directly to the number of pages printed from their computer.

The Deforested Desktop has already been adopted by 50 large companies, and Green Nation aim to have it running in more than 1,000 businesses by the end of the year. The app replaces the background on each worker’s desktop with an interactive image of a luscious, green rainforest. Then, whenever they print any pages, some of the trees on their background disappear. This continues until eventually they are left with only empty, brown soil.

Green Nation hope that by highlighting the cause and effect of their actions, the app will persuade workers to ‘think before they print’, and encourage corporate responsibility. Companies will also benefit from reduced costs. Are there other spaces on a worker’s computers which could be used to address environmental issues?