Too much junk

A few loyal readers commented on my statement in last month’s column that the onus for environmental degradation should rest more with corporations than with individuals. While I did not intend to imply that individuals bear no responsibility at all for the state of our environment, I tried to make the point that corporations are not held accountable for the extent of the damage they do; exploitation of resources and pollution is the “cost of doing business.”

Take junk mail, for example, which accounts for about one-third of all the mail delivered in the world. The U.S. Postal Service delivers about 104.7 billion pieces of junk mail each year, an average of about 848 pieces per household weighing a total of 4 million tons. Taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to collect and dispose of all the junk mail that does not get recycled, almost half of which ends up in landfills, unopened. Eighty to 90 percent of us never want junk mail the first place, yet we bear the burden of dealing with it.

All those catalogs, credit card offers, leaflets and other commercial advertising require 6.5 million tons of paper, and more than 100 million trees a year are logged to produce it. Much of the paper comes from logging the Canadian Boreal forest at a rate of two acres a minute, 24 hours a day. The Boreal, which stretches from Alaska across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean, is one of the world’s largest “carbon reservoirs;” it stores CO2 that is not released into the atmosphere where it would trap heat and accelerate global warming. Home to many threatened species and half of North America’s songbirds, the Boreal holds more fresh water than anywhere else on the planet.

More than half of all trees logged in the Boreal are transformed into American junk mail.

So it is up to us, as individuals, to do what we can to help preserve the Boreal.

At ForestEthics.org you can sign a petition asking Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to support the creation of a Do Not Mail Registry similar to the Do Not Call registry that operates in many states.

Here are some other ways to clear out your mailbox:

• Call 888/567-8688 to eliminate credit card solicitations. (You will be asked for your social security number.)

• A warranty is valid whether or not you return a warranty card, and returning one will put you on more mailing lists.

• Avoid entering contests, another mechanism for compiling mailing lists.

• For first class mail and mail marked “Address correction requested” or “Return postage guaranteed,” ink out the barcode and write “Return to Sender - Refused by Addressee” on the front. You can also write “Please remove my name from your mailing list” on the envelope so the sender knows why you’re returning it.

• Whenever you fill out a form or place an order, always write: “Do not rent or exchange my name” or ask the order taker to please “flag your file” so that your information won’t be shared.

An online search using the key words “junk mail” will yield many web sites with additional tips on how to clear out your mailbox.

NASA’s leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has weighed in on the need for action. He says, “. . . we have reached a point at which we must remove unnecessary carbon emissions from our lives, or face catastrophic consequences. It is hard to imagine waste more unnecessary than the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive each year, and these new findings, revealing that the emissions of junk mail are equal to that of over nine million cars, underscore the prudent necessity of a Do Not Mail Registry.”

- Marcia Nehemiah