Here at Showcase, we’re pretty ecologically minded. In fact, one of the major benefits our clients find when they switch to Showcase is that they can go practically paper free — a huge eco win for many companies.
We're so keen on being the environmental Goody Two-Shoes, we’ve decided to partner with the Zero Waste Countdown Podcast to amplify their message and help us reach even more like minded businesses.
In honour of our new partnership — and Arbor Day here in New Zealand — we’ve rounded up five great Showcase features that help reduce your carbon footprint and boost your eco cred.
1. Sharing digitally eliminates print which equals less trash — and saves trees
Switching to digital marketing materials helps reduce your waste end to end.
A single tree produces an average of 8,500 sheets of paper. That’s 17 reams of standard office copier paper.
So, for every 8,500 slide views in your Showcase app, you’re saving a tree — because every page view is one page not printed out.
The depressing truth about printed materials is that even the very best are ultimately destined for the bin (or hopefully, the recycling bin).
But producing digital sales and marketing materials eliminates the need to print anything. No more killing trees just to reprint order forms that list the Widget 001D upgrade.
And Showcase’s easy sharing features, including our new VIP Pass links, mean that your sales reps and customers don’t need to print, either. Everything they need is always available at the single click of a link.
2. Distributing content to your sales teams digitally cuts carbon that would be produced by the courier
Remember the days of shipping boxes of catalogues and order forms to all your sales reps out in the field? And then at least a portion of those were probably mailed to clients and customers, taking a second shipping journey.
Using Showcase to distribute your sales and marketing materials means that you’re reducing your carbon footprint exponentially. And you’re also saving time and money, which is a definite bonus.
3. Forms and Kiosk Mode cut down on trash for data collection
If you’ve ever been the lucky one tapped for data entry after a conference or trade show, you know how much paper is wasted collecting names and contact info — either with a clipboard and paper forms or a confetti cornucopia of business cards.
Showcase can eliminate all that with Kiosk Mode that allows you to present a form on a tablet to collect contact information (without allowing everybody who visits your booth to poke around and enter dodgy search terms in the web browser — yes, we've seen it!).
This helps save trees, eliminate trash, and preserve sanity: no data entry required.
4. We plant a tree with our Forest Releaf Fund
Did you know that for every 8,500 slide views in Showcase, we donate $10 to Trees That Count? We do! Because every 8,500 pages not printed saves a tree, but we wanted to do you one better.
Trees That Count use that $10 to plant a native tree in New Zealand, so with every donation you double your impact. You already saved a tree by not printing pages in the first place, and then you planted a fresh new tree with every 8,500 page views in your Showcase account.
5. Our Search features help your team keep their cool so they’re not heating up the atmosphere around them
OK, so maybe the research is still out on this one, but we think being able to find what you need, when you need it is a pretty great feature. Our Search function — especially when used with tags and labels — makes it easy to find exactly the file you need to send to your customer and save more trees.
Here’s the bottom line:
- In 2014, 406.5 million metric tons of paper and cardboard were produced worldwide.
- 4,000,000,000 trees are cut down each year for paper production.
- Even with the increased availability of digital tools, we use 400% more paper today than 40 years ago.
- 45% of office paper printed ends up in the trash by the end of the day.
But using digital marketing and sales materials helps protect our forests, cuts down on carbon release and decreases pollution.
And I think that’s something we can all get behind.
Header photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash.