Here are the facts from Forest Ethics:

• Junk mail destroys 100 million trees a year -- the equivalent of deforesting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
• Largely due to deforestation, junk mail manufacturing creates as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 3.7 million cars.
• Every year, Americans receive 848 pieces of junk mail per household -- 44% of which ends up unopened in a landfill.

Also, more than half of unsolicited mail is discarded unread or unopened; the response rate is less than 2%.  And junk mail creates 4 million tons of unnecessary waste per year!

Calculating the weight of the junk mail trash from EPA data, it works out to 13.4% of 1276 lbs per household! So that's 170 pounds of trash per household per year.

3 things to do:

sign the petition for the No Junk Mail Registry: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/281/t/5980/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=941

www.donotmail.org  then donate to www.forestethics.org

Sign up with greendimes. For $20 they will stop 90% of your junk mail and plant 10 trees for you: http://www.greendimes.com/ 

You can also go to www.optoutprescreen.com or www.41pounds.org

You can also stop junk mail from your banks (manage your account online!), credit card solicitation, and most direct mail advertising and locator services quickly and easily by using the template  at:

www.newdream.org/junkmail/index.php, which will generate all the necessary letters. Save money, trees, and your own time.
This solution also saves tons of emissions and energy needed to produce the junk mail and transport it to your home.  Then, if you recycle it, that takes a great deal of energy too.  So, eliminate junk mail altogether with the help of these great companies and services.

 

reference link: www.greendimes.com

The Creative Citizen Network: