Did you know the average American adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail annually? If you find yourself throwing out (or even recycling) all those advertisements and phone books, there’s something you can do to stop wasting all that paper, time and energy!
*Visit www.optoutprescreen.com to opt out of credit offers or simply send back those offers in the prepaid envelope.
*Visit www.yellowpagesoptout.com and choose which phone books you want to receive. If you change your mind, you can get them delivered. I was receiving three different phone books and using zero.
*Visit www.coxtarget.com and www.DMAchoice.org to stop the coupon envelopes such as ValPak.
In the case of first class or presorted first class mail, you can cross your address and barcode out, circle the first class postage stamp and write “refused: return to sender” and drop into any mailbox. This doesn’t work as well for other types of mail.
Nearly 100 million trees are cut down annually to make junk mail in the U.S. according to the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition, and ForestEthics found that junk mail’s carbon footprint is equal to the greenhouse gases released by nine million cars or heating 13 million homes in the winter.
SEO (Shepherd Environmental Organization) will host the Concert-Cleanup-Conference on Sunday, Nov. 17 at 11:30 a.m. Come out to the Farmers’ Market and listen to some fun music. Then join Tri Beta and SEO for a river cleanup, followed by a potluck and conversation about the future events and brainstorming for SEO!
Don’t forget to reuse or recycle this issue of The Picket when you’re done reading!
Information gathered from www.earth911.com