Despite our best efforts to stop marketers from sending us junk mail, the stuff still seems to find its way into our mailbox. We use some of it for things like grocery lists and keeping score when playing Scrabble, but what to do with the rest? Here are some project ideas and junk mail art inspiration.
It can be challenging going paperless at home or work, right?
One Jackson Hole, Wyoming business, WordenGroup Strategic Public Relations, has announced a “Go Paperless” initiative for Arbor Day, April 24, 2009.
The company wants to reduce office paper flow and save trees in honor of the national tree planting holiday.
While July 2008 looked relatively normal in terms of Fourth of July celebrations and hot weather, $4 per gallon gas put a damper on that other summertime staple: the family road trip.As you might imagine, we had a lot to say about that gas thing… but didn’t take a vacation from covering a wide range of topics.
Conservation group ForestEthics has released their annual “Naughty or Nice” list of corporations regarding their treatment of our forests. These ten companies continue to fill your mailbox with junk at the expense of the trees.
The list, determined by four separate criteria, includes a “Checking Twice” category for companies in a gray area. JC Penny has decreased their direct mail use but still supports logging companies, so while they stay out the top 10 snail-mail-spammers, but still aren’t free of all charges.
Check out the rest of the list, along with 10 other companies who are being nice to the trees, below:
Former mailman Steven Padgett received probation in federal court for failing to deliver years worth of junk mail. Although the mailman did not stop delivering junk mail based on the environmental impact of junk mail, which accounts for 30% of all US mail. He did it because he couldn’t keep up with the volume of mail he had to deliver and still maintain [...]
Sure, the American (and so the global) financial market is an absolute mess right now, largely because of dodgy credit and lending practices by major financial institutions. Sure, millions of Americans (and people across the globe) are buried in debt, be it a mortgage or a maxed-out credit card.
Despite these ominous signs of an economic storm on the horizon, credit card companies are more than ready to give you outrageously generous credit and a nice, shiny new plastic card. But wait, it gets better! Just sign up now, financial crisis or not, and you can get a year without interest, a new appliance or electronic gizmo, a trip to Cancun!
OK, maybe not those last two.
This scenario may well sound familiar for any of you who 1) have applied for or opened up a new credit card account at any point in your natural life and 2) receive postal mail in some manner. Despite the environmental crisis facing planet Earth, junk mail is far from being an endangered species of tree-killing pest. Along with catalogues, bills, advertisements, and other snail-mail SPAM you likely do not want, credit card offers contribute significantly to the paper used for junk (unsolicited) mail.
Fortunately for consumers and postal carriers, there is a way to free yourself from the avalanche of credit card offers and so help reduce the number of trees used for paper.
[image via Vards Uzvards]
Americans receive the equivalent of over 100 million trees in the form of junk mail every single year. Most of these catalogues and offers that show up in our mailboxes don’t even warrant a second glance. They go straight into the trash or the recycle bin and on to the waste stream. Junk mail wastes our time and our resources.
The U.K.’s Royal Mail offers a door-to-door opt out system. Folks can just fill out a simple form requesting that mail carriers not leave bulk mailings in their boxes. In the U.S., we aren’t that lucky. There are a few things you can do, though, to slow down the needless flow of waste into your mailbox.
From our friends at ZapRoot this week: Arizona tests artificial CO2 filtering trees. Sarah Palin loves oil. We help you find ways to get rid of your junk mail.
100 Million Trees Are Cut Each Year to Generate Junk Mail
A report by ForestEthics, the nonprofit environmental organization whose mission is to protect endangered forests, has made a very startling revelation: that there are 100 million green reasons why junk mail are an annoying intrusion.
Not that the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive each year are irksome enough or that the emissions of junk mail are equal to those of over nine million cars or 51 million tons of greenhouse gases.
The group estimates that every year, more than 100 million trees are cut down to make junk mail - the equivalent of clear-cutting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every 4 months!
Birgitte Rasine is the chief evolution officer of LUCITÀ, a firm believer in abolishing junk mail.
Help. My hands are sweaty, my heart’s racing, my vision’s blurred and I can’t breathe. I’ve been shredding since last Monday and my office is nearly filled to the ceiling with little multicolored bits of paper that resemble viruses magnified under a microscope. I feel myself sinking down through this swamp of cellulose dust, flailing about in vain to find a chair or cabinet to hang on to, grasping for one last breath of clean air… then darkness.
That’s my nightmarish vision of what it would feel like if I took all the direct mail that I ever received and shredded it all in one go. I’d probably pass out, either from exhaustion or breathing pulverized paper pulp.
Let me be blunt: I hate junk mail. Whoever invented it, I want to dunk them into an Olympic-size pool filled to the brim with mailers, postcards and superficially impersonal letters. I want to pour all the ink that’s ever been wasted into their bath tub and make them sit in it. I want them to lick every single postage stamp ever used for direct mail. I want them to look in the eyes of every one of their victims—once vibrant, dynamic people who are now spending their lives trying to organize, shred, get rid of junk mail they never asked for. Their names are sold without their knowledge, their identities traded like junk bonds in darkened, dusty corners of cyberspace. Do-not-call and do-not-mail lists are riddled with loopholes. Few of us have the time or the resources to mount legal campaigns to protect the rights that should naturally be ours to begin with. Do we need martial law to protect ourselves from the insistent march of these malicious mailers?
In real life, I’m somewhat more diplomatic. In principle, I get why direct mail exists. There are legitimate reasons used by legitimate organizations with legitimate desires to inform their audiences about the work they do, their products and services. The problem is, it’s purely financial. There’s not a single piece of direct mail that I have ever received that was sent for any other reason than acquiring donations, selling products or services, or other monetary gains.
Junk Mail. Two words, a lot of impact. 100 million trees worth annually in the US, along with the resources used to print them, plus the resulting additional emissions generated carrying them around to their final destination, your mailbox. What to do, aside from recycle?
The first option that may come to mind is the well advertised Green Dimes service. It does indeed seem to do a great job at reducing mailings, up to 90% in three months, and they plant 10 trees for you while they’re at it. I do have a qualm with tree planting however, as it’s recently been shown that this popular eco guilt reliever has also resulted in the displacement of people in places like Uganda that tree planting companies want to make use of for this now increasingly lucrative business. But I digress…
Green Dimes would seem a fine option, but for one thing - there’s a better one out there.
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