I am sick of junk mail. Under my desk is my paper recycling bin and it is overflowing with mail and office waste from the past week. And it is the constant flow of this junk mail that gets me going. You see, the thing is these junk mailers are being produced, contributing the environmental degradation, and for what?!?!--I don't even want most of the crap they send me! Did you know that 19 billion catalogs are printed per year in the United States. That equals 53 million trees or the equivelant of 2000 Central Parks cut down each year.
If we stop 5 million catalogs from being produced = 225 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water are saved/ year; saves enough energy to power 350,000 homes per year; is = to removing 6,000 cars off the road per year in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
Those are GREAT reasons.
Most of the time I am apt to think/feel that the reason for most of the waste on the planet is because humans are over consumers and have created this demand. On a large scale, this is still very much the truth. However, on a personal level and dealing with this problem in particular...it frustrates me. These mailers are being sent to everyone--whether they like it or not which means the good that is produced (in this case, the junk mail) that has also consumed ALL those resources has no purpose at all other than WASTE. Those resources were consumed for no purpose and that frustrates me. People aren't necessarily demanding this service directly (maybe indirectly by being overconsumers, thus creating a general demand across all industry)...instead, the business is trying to create the demand even when it isn't there. Can I completely blame them--no because I know you need marketing tools to stimulate business development....but maybe we can start going the paperless/more eco-friendly route...
Luckily, for me, most of the catalogs and junk mail sent to me can be recycled. But for some, their local recycling facilities don't accept glossy paper or other such materials that this junk mail is often printed on. So I atleast get to recycle it, but the fact still remains that even MORE resources are having to be put into this piece of junkmail just to get a second life that is hopefully more useful than its first life as junk. But what about those who can't recycle it and it just has to go in their trash? The cradle to grave process yielded nothing that was beneficial to the people or planet, rather just contributed to the environmental degradation and frustration of the homeowner.
So instead of just ranting and not giving you an adequate solution to change the overall situation...here ya go. It is a website that you can do to, see all the catalogs you are currently getting and then unsubscribe to them. And, it really is easy and won't take your entire work day to do. Here is the info:
Stop Catalog Sign-up
www.catalogchoice.com
