Junk Mail - What You Can Do Today

Junk Mail: A Disturbing Problem for a Finite Planet

• 2007: 103.5 Billion pieces of unwanted mail
• The greenhouse gas emissions t produce this amount is equivalent to 3.5 million cars on the road. (Not including transporting the junk mail or disposal of junk mail)
• This amount consumes 96.7 billion gallons of water and more than 100 MILLION TREES.  PER YEAR.
• Most of these, the carbon dioxide sequestering old growth forest trees – not sustainable managed tree farms.
• Only 22% of the earth’s original forests remain intact on our planet.
• The worlds richest fifth consume over 84% of the worlds paper.  The poorest fifth just over 1%.
• The Canadian Boreal, one of the forests being logged for junk mail, protects us from the effects of global warming, storing more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem on earth.  Despite this, the Boreal is being logged at a rate of two acres a minute, 24 hours a day.
• The Boreal holds more fresh water than anywhere else on Earth.
• After all is said & done – only 30% of this unwanted mail gets recycled.

 

So – at the end of the day –– 100 MILLION trees gone , 96.7 million gallons of water contaminated & polluted, fossil fuel emissions equivalent to 3.5 million cars polluting our air therefore destroying our health & our planet …

 

***All for a less than 3% response to the junk mail that told us to buy more STUFF.  Junk mail we didn’t ask for in the first place.

Easy Ways To Stop Junk Mail & Preserve Trees :

·         Download and sign this letter and ask your mail carrier to deliver it to Canada Post.

·         Place a No Junk Mail Sign on your mail box or mail slot.

·         Sign up with the Canadian Marketing Association's Do Not Contact Registry. This enables you to reduce the number of marketing offers received by mail, telephone and fax.

·         Boycott Kimberly-Clark – it takes 90 years to grow one box of Kleenex brand tissues – Kimberly-Clark continues to use old growth trees for their products. http://www.kleercut.net/en/

·         Always look for the FCS certification symbol on paper / wood products. http://www.certificationcanada.org/english/fsc/

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