3 Ways to Reduce Paper Waste & Kill Your Junkmail

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At the end of this blog post are the 3 links to change your life and our planet for the better in 2010, showing you the way to reduce the amount of paper waste you receive.

The average person in the US receives nearly 11 pieces of junk mail each week, or 560 pieces a year. This amounts to 4.5 million tons of junk mail yearly, of which 44% goes straight to the landfill unopened and unread.

The best thing I did at the beginning of 2009 was stop receiving junk mail through traditional mail. This year was the first year I’d only receive legitimate letters and bills with no paper junk mail. My wife on the other hand didn’t take my lead immediately. The difference in our daily mail was quite stark. I’d receive 1-2 letters and she’d receive numerous offers and 5-6 catalogs.

100 million trees are cut down each year to produce junk mail.

1 million trees offset 48,000,000 pounds of carbon emissions.

Eliminating junk mail in the US would offset 480,000 cars.

-matadorchange.com

While I’m happy that I took the steps necessary to stop the flood of junk mail I’ve recently taken the added step of opting out of receiving phone books. I haven’t used a phone book in years and I never knew how to stop them from being delivered… until now. How much is wasted in the manufacturing of phone books?

According to StopThePhoneBooks.com approximately 615 million phonebooks were produced last year

500 phone books take:– according to a study in California

17 to 31 trees- depending on how much is new paper and how is recycled paper

4100 kwh (a 3 bdrm house in Colorado uses about 600 -1500 kwh per month– so that about 3-6 months of electricity)

7000 gallons of water ( thats about 14 gallons of water per book).

Then –how many gallons of gasoline for the delivery trucks? Gas for the trash trucks? Gas for the recycling trucks?

So– how much did we use for 615 million phonebooks ? — Well, thats about 1.23 million times each of the numbers above — in just one year. Two years ago they only produced 450 million phone books.

If you’re interested in taking a step toward breaking this cycle of waste I highly recommend opting out of receiving junk mail and phone books. In fact I challenge you to tell 10 friends about the ability to opt-out of of junk mail and phone books in order to fast track improving our impact on the environment.

The official way to opt-in or opt-out of credit card or insurance offers
OptOutPrescreen.com

Another resource to opt-out of other direct marketing offers (junk mail)
Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Choice

How to opt out of receiving phone books
YellowPagesOptOut.com

Additional Information on this subject:

Technorati Tags: Junk Mail, Phone Book, Opt-Out, Recycle, New Year, New Year Resolution