I’m probably a little late to the party with this, but I’ve just found out that the World Wide Fund for Nature (previously known as World Wildlife Fund) has developed and launched a file format that it hopes will benefit the environment. The new WWF file format is a bit like Adobe’s widely used Portable Document Format (PDF), but it has one importance difference; WWF files cannot be printed. Not even if you ask nicely!

The launch of the WWF file is a great way for the organisation to highlight the problems that are created by deforestation, but I think it’s unlikely that we’ll all switch from PDF to WWF files overnight. That’s not really a problem though. Even if most of the population never send or receive a WWF file, news coverage of the initiative should help to raise awareness of the problem and encourage people to be more selective about what they print, which is a great result for the World Wide Fund for Nature. And for the trees too, who are no doubt whooping with glee at the prospect of not being cut down.

Unfortunately the software needed to create WWF files is currently only available for the Mac at the moment, but there is a Windows version on the way. If you’re lucky enough to own a Mac you can download the WWF plugin by clicking here: http://www.saveaswwf.com/en/what-is-it.html