Friday, June 06, 2008

THE LAWSON FILE: NO ONE IS SAFE FROM JUNK MAIL


Over o­ne hundred million trees and forty billion gallons of water are wasted every year printing the unwanted postal clutter known as junk mail, not to mention the untold quantities of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, that are produced transporting it.

Mother Earth News reports while the direct mailers who produce and distribute those 40 million tons of sales pitches take in over $200 billion annually, taxpayers bear the burden of some $320 million to cart their unsolicited promos, pleas, and promises to and from incinerators, garbage dumps (on land and sea), and recycling centers. Sixty-eight million trees and 28 billion gallons of water (and the animals who lived there) are used to produce each year's crop of catalogs and come-ons.

And no one ones the crap.

If you're like me, and I bet you are, junk mail heads directly to your recycle bin (or your trash).

A waste of time is wasting the planet.

Did you know the U.S. Postal Service can't even deliver all the mail that comes through the system? Each year it discards about 317,000 tons -- that's right, tons -- of undeliverable junk mail.

Unbelievable!

An editorial in the Roanoke Times tells us, "Members of the Direct Marketing Association send about 80 percent of all standard mail. Think about that. The good men and women of the United States Postal Service daily slog through rain, sleet, snow and ice to deliver -- drum roll, please -- mostly junk mail!"

Something should be done about these people.

And the crap is everywhere.

Dutch households are receiving ever-larger quantities of door-to-door flyers in their mailboxes. Last year, a total of 12.5 billion flyers were distributed, a 20 percent increase over 2006.

Wales received an estimated 191 million items of junk mail in the past 12 months, according to a new survey. Another 2.6 million were sent to dead Welsh people.

Even when you die, you won't be safe.

IT'S GOT TO STOP!

The following is from Forest Ethics.

Support a Do Not Mail Registry!

Just as the Do Not Call Registry freed Americans from telemarketers, a Do Not Mail Registry would give us the choice to stop junk mailers from violating our privacy, wasting our time and damaging the environment.
Go to http://www.forestethics.org/ for further information and to sign petition.

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