Save a Tree
Dear Environmentalists,
Do you really care about how many trees are slaughtered for our reckless consumption of paper products? If so, please feel free to pester credit card companies, catalog companies, and local businesses about the inordinate amount of junk my husband and I get in our mailbox every week. When my husband checks the mail (community mailbox is around the block -- whatever happened to having mail delivered to your house?) he throws all the junk in the back of his car.
This is one week's worth of crap
Now multiply that by 52 and by however many people in my community receive the same stuff. What a waste. We don't read it, we don't want it, it just accumulates, we have to dispose of it, and it's very annoying. This is after we put ourselves on that list that prevents you from getting a landslide of pre-approved credit card applications in the mail. Prior to that, the pile would have been twice as big.
Is it just me, or does this annoy lots of other people, too? Is there a sizable portion of the population who appreciates receiving this stuff, who reads the flyers, and I'm just in the annoyed minority? Somehow, I don't think so.
Apparently, there is something I can do about this. But how about all you tree-huggers out there pitching in and doing something for the trees that would result in consumers being happy for a change? It would be much appreciated. It might even make you look less loony and get you a few more supporters.
Sincerely,
S. Stapers
Do you really care about how many trees are slaughtered for our reckless consumption of paper products? If so, please feel free to pester credit card companies, catalog companies, and local businesses about the inordinate amount of junk my husband and I get in our mailbox every week. When my husband checks the mail (community mailbox is around the block -- whatever happened to having mail delivered to your house?) he throws all the junk in the back of his car.
This is one week's worth of crap
Now multiply that by 52 and by however many people in my community receive the same stuff. What a waste. We don't read it, we don't want it, it just accumulates, we have to dispose of it, and it's very annoying. This is after we put ourselves on that list that prevents you from getting a landslide of pre-approved credit card applications in the mail. Prior to that, the pile would have been twice as big.
Is it just me, or does this annoy lots of other people, too? Is there a sizable portion of the population who appreciates receiving this stuff, who reads the flyers, and I'm just in the annoyed minority? Somehow, I don't think so.
Apparently, there is something I can do about this. But how about all you tree-huggers out there pitching in and doing something for the trees that would result in consumers being happy for a change? It would be much appreciated. It might even make you look less loony and get you a few more supporters.
Sincerely,
S. Stapers
7 Comments:
Junk mail is murder!
No oil for junkmail! Heh - a friend of mine in an Eastern seaboard state says in his Town they have to separate everything and that their curbside recycling is mandatory and punishable by fines - and when the recycling arrives at the town's garbage center it's recombined as ONE unit because they make more money off the collective tonnage...
Good slogans!
I think we could make a case that all this junkmail is Bush's fault.
dirtcrashr: that is the sort of thing that pushes some people over the edge. Time for revolution!!
Actually, junk mail could be beneficial to the environment. Whether it's recycled or not, it mostly ends up in a landfill, where it sits without decomposing practically forever. Fifty thousand years from now, archaeologists will be able to see what was on sale at Academy Sports & Outdoors this week.
Trees are cut to produce paper for junk mail, but are quickly replaced by new trees. If there were no market for pulpwood, people would grow fewer trees, lacking an economic motive. Only in the fantasy world occupied by environmentalists are land use decisions not based on economics.
I suspect, though no environmentalist would ever consider it, that junk mail is an important contributor to the North American carbon sink. It might reduce more atmospheric carbon than trashy novels, porn, or even Xerox paper. The increase in junk mail could account for the increasing amount of carbon absorbed by the carbon sink.
Well, OK, good point. I just wish all that beneficial junk could reach the landfill without making a detour through my mailbox!
So, why can't they send it straight to the landfill and bypass our homes?
I think we're back to economics again. Advertisers would derive no personal economic benefit from sending your junk mail straight to the landfill.
This is only partially tongue-in-cheek, you know. Some academic type really ought to get the statistics on bulk mail delivery from the Postal Service and on carbon absorption by the sink, and do a correlation.
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