So that fake USB Chainsaw from the other day is indeed fake. Hence the fakeness. It’s instead an eye-opening ad campaign aimed at educating the public about the wastefulness of printers.

Instead of buying a USB chainsaw, you can download a little program that plays the sound of a chainsaw whenever you print something.

That’s supposed to remind you that paper is made from trees — trees that have to be cut down in order to make paper to go in your printer.

I’m all for going paperless, but I’d rather have an actual USB chainsaw than a program that makes a chainsaw noise the five times per year that I print something. I know it’s wasteful, you know it’s wasteful, and the fact that toner cartridges cost more than what I paid for my laser printer is enough to keep it sitting on my desk doing nothing for the next ten years.

[via Wired]