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Public Awareness: Tree Trunk
270,000 trees are flushed down the toilet or end up as garbage every day around the world.
Use tissues sparingly.
How much toilet paper we each find it necessary to use when “doing our business” isn’t really water-cooler conversation. In fact, I don’t even think it is the type of subject you want to breach with your most trusted companion.
I once lived with somebody who used an enormous amount of toilet paper. It was truly ridiculous. I have no idea why this was so, and while I didn’t really want to know, I would often find myself thinking; “What the HELL is she doing in there?”
Maybe she was a hygeine freak (although by the sight of her bedroom, I highly doubt it). Maybe she felt the need to cover the seat with toilet paper like you would in a public toilet. Maybe she wrapped her whole hand in toilet paper, glove style, whenever she wiped, for fear of contamination. Maybe she utilised her creative skills to make toilet paper origami while patiently waiting for her business to be over.
Who knows? All I know is, she went through about a tree a day, and it bothered me enough to make me think about it everytime I went near the loo, but not enough to ask her what the hell was going on.
This is the awareness campaign for my former roommate, if ever there was one. If only I could turn back time and install a tree trunk paper dispenser in the loo at that house, then I would know: did she genuinely need all that paper, or was she just a waster, pure and simple?
Seeing as you can’t just confront a person about their paper wastage in such a private arena (nor keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t use too much), this is a fantastic and effective advertising campaign designed to generate awareness about something that people generally do not care to even think about, let alone discuss.
And so, now that I have been reminded of 270,000 dead plants whose journey from a tiny seedling to a grown tree has culminated in wiping someones backside and being flushed down the toilet with the waste it had been so unluckily designated to clean away, I will definitely reconsider my usage.
Advertising Agency: DDB, Muscat, Oman
Creative Director: Mahesh Anvekar
Art Director: Pravin Amudan
Copywriter: Santu Sakar
Graphic Designer: Nilesh Ayare
Released: October 2008
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Much better than the NRDC coffee cup campaign featured here earlier today!
Comment by qka — 9 March, 2009 @ 10:17 am
I think this is a great way to make the people aware of how much they use, I only really realize how much paper towels I use when its running low, and I get by just fine drying my hands with one instead of 2 or 3.
Comment by I am bored — 9 March, 2009 @ 4:14 pm
This is such a good idea. It kind even lloks good there.
Comment by Serge — 9 March, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
As a practical person I feel obliged to point out that instead of doing this there are several ways to reduce paper usage:
1. Bidet (Its clean now, what do you want?)
2. Hand driers (No, not the ones in every public restroom, ones that actually work.)
I saw a design for a hand drier that used a high-speed stream of air to “wipe” the water off of your hands, instead of trying to evaporate it.
I guess the ad is a success because I started thinking of logical ways to save paper.*
I am also thinking it is a failure for not educating on *how* to save paper.
Also I wonder if the money spent on this campaign (ironically printed on paper) wouldn’t have saved more trees if it had been spent installing bidets and “air-stream” hand driers in trafficked restrooms.
*Too bad I am an engineering buff and thought immediately of ways to actually save paper, (something I don’t think most people are (outside of Germany, a place with an engineering section in the newspaper).
Comment by Miles — 2 April, 2009 @ 3:36 am