Green Freelancing: Save a Tree with the WWF File Format

Posted by Matt on Mar 7, 2011 in Opinion | 2 comments

As if you needed another file format to add to your repertoire, the WWF (no, not that one… that’s WWE now), the World Wildlife Foundation, has created a new one for you and they’ve added their own twist to it. It’s pretty simple, really. When a file has a .wwf extension, it behaves just like a PDF, but it simply can’t be printed.

The idea is that it avoids using all sorts of extra paper when it’s not really needed. But how might it affect you and your business?

How Does it Work?

To make it all come together, you need to download a little piece of software from the Save as WWF website. The installation is pretty straight forward – it’s like any other piece of software. You download a zip file to your computer, unzip it, and double click (it’s a slightly different process for those of you on Macs, but just as easy.)

Once you install the software, you will see a new printer listed on your machine called “Save as WWF”. Watch out! Those sneaky little treehuggers also made this new “printer” your default, so, you may want to reset your default printer to whatever printer you use regularly.

The process of creating a .wwf file is as simple as printing your document and selecting “Save as WWF” as the printer. When you do this, the process is very similar to printing to a PDF (which is probably a little more familiar). First, you are asked for the destination, and then the filename for your new file. Once you hit “Save”, the magic happens and your file is created in the .wwf file format.

Go ahead and open it. You can’t print it. I dare you to try. It delivers on what it says it does. At first, what I thought was nice was that it tacks on a page at the end of your document explaining the WWF file format and why it does what it does – it seemed very helpful if you send one of these to your client, but you don’t tell them what it’s all about. The problem is, to even view it, your client needs to download the software, too, so the extra page seems more like advertising than anything useful.

There’s an Inconvenient Truth Here

While using this file format may coincide with your personal beliefs, it may be an inconvenience to your clients. Although the WWF file works much like a PDF (minus the print, of course), it does require that your client have the software themselves to even be able to view it. Once we had created some .wwf documents, we removed the software, and Windows 7 would no longer let us view the documents. If you plan on sending a client a .wwf file, you might also want to send along a link to the download – or, better yet, put the link in your email signature to raise awareness within your entire network.

The other inconvenience, obviously, is the fact that your client simply cannot print the file. You need to keep in mind how they process information – they may like to “mark up” the document with their notes as they review it – something they’d typically do in paper-format. By using a .wwf file, you may be true to yourself, but you may be hurting business.

So What’s a Freelancer to Do?

In my opinion, if this is something you are interested in, I say, go for it. If it’s a huge inconvenience for your client, you can bet they’ll tell you – at which time, you can provide a printable PDF. At least this way, if they don’t need it, and they don’t ask for it, you can be sure they won’t be unnecessarily printing copy after copy. Even if you have a few clients that you still need to provide the PDFs for, you may also have a few clients where WWF will suffice, and you can do your part to slow excessive printing in the workplace.

I know I’ve had clients print 3-4 copies of 14 page documents so each person in the room would have a copy, when we easily could have shared and probably saved a solid 28 pages of paper. If your client does want to print it, remind them to print on both sides of the paper to be more efficient.

Hey, you never know, maybe your client will be so impressed that you stand for something, that they’ll make changes to their own processes.