Back in late 2007, Alan Durning was eager to stop the incessant flow of junk mail to his door. So he used Catalog Choice, the free service that helps reduce what merchants send you, and the Direct Mail Association’s opt-out service, as primary tools to reduce the arrival of throwaway advertising and his burden on the waste-stream.
Results?
I wanted to see what Catalog Choice and DMA’s program would do to stem the tide.
The answer, it turned out, was "not enough." Despite all I did, I still received a two-foot-tall stack of junk mail that weighed 50 pounds.
As I said before, ad mail isn’t the biggest of [the Cascade states’] challenges, but it ought to be among the easiest to solve. In fact, it’s an opportunity for regional leadership. Unwanted mail wastes paper and all the trees, energy, and climate emissions it takes to manufacture and carry 50-pound piles of junk mail to each or us each year, then recycle it again, typically unopened. It also wastes advertisers’ money, driving up costs and prices and suppressing profits.
Enacting Do Not Mail registries in Cascadian states and provinces would likely spark imitation across North America. It might even stimulate national action.
In the interim, we can each trim the waste of paper and money individually, by de-junking our boxes. Here’s what I received at my door, and how I responded at year’s end:
15 pounds of phone books. The sheer mass of these—30 percent of the total—was the biggest surprise. I got six books (of which, five were yellow business listings) from three competing companies. Preferring online directories, I almost never use a phone book. They usually go straight from the porch to the green bin. Strictly speaking, phone books are not mail, because they’re delivered by phone company contractors, not the Post Office. Still, they’re unsolicited advertising brought to your door, with no easy way to decline. One of them, called Yellowbook, promotes itself as "an eco-friendly company" on the cover.
ACTION: I scanned the opening pages of each phone book, looking for information about how to stop getting them. I even looked up the purportedly eco-friendly Yellowbook online. No luck. An internet search found this useful site for how to opt-out of phone book delivery. In a few minutes, I was able to opt out of Qwest and Yellowbook but not Verizon directories. |
Durning goes on to say how much he received in unsolicited neighborhood advertisers, catalogues, political mail, et cetera, and what action he took to try to stop them.
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The diary rescue begins below and continues in the jump.
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Belle Ame posted a Photo Diary of America's First National Park: "I hope most people read the title and thought ‘Yellowstone!’"
Greg306 was one of the lucky ones apparently, having decided early on to Change My Behavior for "Cash for clunkers": "I don't like buying new cars. And while my family's current financial situation is better than that facing many others, with two kids in private college this fall and economic uncertainty that could affect both my job and my wife's, we are trying to be financially cautious. And I don't like buying new cars. That being said, I went out and bought a new car on Monday - the first new car I have ever had (and I am 47 years old). The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), also known as "Cash for Clunkers" paid me $4,500 to turn in my 1994 Mercury Villager (rated at 18 mpg, probably getting much less) for a 2010 Toyota Corolla rated at 28 mpg. I was motivated by three factors ..."
Lucky, because as ultrageek in What the hell is happening with Cash for Clunkers?, Trobone in Cash for Clunkers - Suspended??????, and turneresq in AP/Politico Attack Overwhelming Success of 'Clunkers' Program wrote, it appears the less-than-week-old program, which had numerous green critics, has been suspended because of being so successful.
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The Overnight News Digest is posted. Included is the story, U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time 'to Go Home'..
citisven went eco-meta in Global Warming: A Path Beyond Denial and Despair: "One of the most poignant lines I remember from An Inconvenient Truth was Al Gore's concern that in light of the problem's magnitude there was a danger that people might go straight from denial to despair. In other words, if you allow the numbers and prognostications concerning global warming to sink into your consciousness you may be left with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness which will either leave you chronically depressed or simply reverting back to the more comfortable denial zone."
And RLMiller also looked at how observing environmental impacts and policy responses can be disconcerting, in GreenRoots: Hope: "The news coming out of the environmental movement is of despair. Global warming...polar bears and pikas on the brink of extinction...methane and carbon trapped in permafrost to be liberated by warming, causing further warming...Arctic sea ice disappearing before our eyes...Antarctic ice shelves collapsing...commercial fishing on verge of collapse...hurricanes, droughts, and flooding...peak oil...peak water...but no signs of peak people. Yet to deny these very serious issues is to be labeled a global warming denier, in the same category as James Inhofe, and with a tenuous grasp on reality. This diary is about the tiny space between denial and despair."
terryhallinan, who usually is on the geothermal beat, spoke up for Biomass Power: Burn, Baby, Burn. Save The PlanetFrankly I think it is foolish to grow corn for energy and have doubts about electric vehicles but biomass power is surely slighted in this country for no obvious reason.
KVoimakas was impressed with something s/he read about Cleaning up the Earth AND Generating Energy: "The title of the article says it all: Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months ...Here we have a 16 year old science fair contest named Daniel Burd. And what did Dan do? Well, he caused plastic to decompose in three months."
FishOutofWater alerted us to the Mysterious Glow-in-the-Dark Arctic Clouds Invading the USA: Electric blue clouds, literally at the edge of space, have been recently seen glowing in the dark from Oregon to Colorado to Virginia, further south than they have ever been seen. Noctilucent clouds were first reported in the far north after the Krakatoa eruption. Until the last several decades they were always seen north of 50 N Latitude. No one is sure why the clouds are moving south but global warming is a suspected cause.
Eclectablog reported that Mich. Gov. issues significant CLIMATE CHANGE executive order: "In November of 2007, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm issued an executive order establishing the Michigan Climate Action Council (MCAC). Over the course of the next 16 months, the MCAC, a collection of stakeholders from across the spectrum, developed a 125-page document, the Michigan Climate Action Council Climate Action Plan, which contains 53 recommendations for reducing the impacts of climate change. Yesterday, during the Clean Energy Now! rally on the lawn of the Michigan Capitol, we learned via Twitter that Governor Granholm had signed a second executive order, EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE No. 2009-4, that implements several of the MCAC's recommendations, all aimed at achieving the MCAC's stated goal of delivering a 20% reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases by 2020 and an 80% reduction by 2050."
notwisconsin discussed eco-movies in Tree huggers at the box office: "The films in question, At the Edge of the World and The Cove, have been playing the film festival circuit for the better part of a year, and are soon getting limited release. Both are really well done, and try to glorify a group called the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a private navy that is currently at war with the Empire of Japan over the issue of whaling."
cabaretic delved into The Organic Food Debate: "To qualify my position, I have no personal qualms against organic food. Indeed, there are certain organic products, cheese being one of them, where the difference in quality between organic products and conventional ones, particularly as regards superior taste, justifies the increase in cost. Though the study does take aim at nutritional content, what it does not take into account is the larger impact of sustainable farming, organic food's appeal to people with allergies to environmental toxins, and its attraction to those who hold an understandably noble desire to keep from continuing to pollute the earth with pesticides and chemical fertilizers."
The Anomaly did some tongue-clucking over Scientists Who Favor Fake Volcanoes to Fight Global Warming: "A panel convened on Tuesday by AEI argued that geoengineering would be necessary to combat global warming."
T. Boone: Why not get inventive? was A Siegel's query to the billionaire: "T. Boone Pickens has been spending $10s of millions) to promote The Pickens' Plan which, while captivating to many, is a fundamentally flawed concept that could help nail the coffin shut on America's future rather than, as he promotes, set the stage for something better. While valuable to have a prominent Republican oil man emphasizing that "this is one problem that we can drill our way out of", Pickens is offering transitioning from one fossil fuel addiction (oil) to another (natural gas) when it comes to transport, without offering anything to cut America's coal addiction. Sigh ... T Boone, however, could put his eloquence (and, he is eloquent), knowledge, and resources to work to real solutions that build on some of his thoughts when it comes to The Pickens Plan.
Lefty Coaster lamented yet another effect of climate change in Global Warming is pushing deserts into higher latitudes: "This shift of the Earth's deserts will drastically impact every continent (except Antarctica) and their ecosystems. The same ecosystems that hundreds of millions of people in those regions have come to depend on. That raises the specter of populations being displaced as millions flee their ancestral homelands on the edges of the encroaching deserts. Competition for resources in the midst of increasing climate in flux is likely to become much more intense, and fractious."
Makai Mauka said it’s capitalism that’s at fault for our environmental woes in delUSional carbon dioxide exhalers: "The mortal fallacy of Capitalism is that it is an ideology founded on fiction, not on reality. The cornerstone, illusory as it is, of Capitalism is that Earth's supply of physical resources is infinite....which claim, recognized by reasonable adults to be delusional, has become an institutionalized delusion that can only lead to some catastrophic result, such as is increasingly the world today."