Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Stamp Out Junk Mail

A Year of Living Greener posted recently on Canada’s Red Dot Campaign — little red stickers people can put on their mailboxes to alert their mail carrier not to leave flyers and other mass mailings that arrive addressed to Occupant. We get an annoying gob of glossy useless-flyers almost every week at my house, so I was eager to check out Red Dot’s suggested link for U.S. residents. This led me to Forest Ethics, which is trying to create a Do Not Mail Registry, similar to the popular Do Not Call list. They estimate that the carbon emissions necessary to create 6.5 million tons of junk mail in the U.S are equivalent to the emissions from 37 million cars. Add that to the millions of trees felled each year to create all this paper, and the fact that most of it winds up in landfills — I personally would love to have a simple Do Not Mail registry similar to the Do Not Call list to end this once and for all.

Today’s mitzvah: Check out Forest Ethic’s Do Not Mail Us petition to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Harry Reid — 43,278 signatures strong and growing! You can also visit Catalog Choice to immediately reduce the catalogs you receive in the mail.


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2 comments:

Emily said...

What I'm still trying to figure out is how to get them to stop mailing us those damned "Shopper Stopper" things every other day. I've tried calling an opting out, but it never seems to work. Those things are a huge pain and waste.

jen x said...

Emily, if you find a way to stop them, let me know. We get those and a bunch of loose-leaf coupon sheets every few days. This is why I like the Canadian idea (red stickers right inside the mailbox), so the mail carrier knows not to stuff the box. Our building has 100+ apartments and I've seen the mail people come in with this stuff -- they don't even look at the addresses, just stuff one in each box, sigh.