Blog: Green Forests, Cool Planet

Last week The Wall Street Journal showcased 41pounds.org for its complete service stopping junk mail — including catalogs, credit card offers, magazine offers, coupons, sweepstakes entries and more.

Kudos to Journal reporter Nancy Matsumoto for noticing that ProQuo makes money by selling their customers’ names to marketing companies.

Meanwhile 41pounds.org is also mentioned as a great way to stop junk mail in X-Biz, which serves the adult entertainment business community.

Just another day in the world of junk mail…

~ Carolyn

I love to see kids making a difference! This news comes from our friends at Habitat for Humanity. Last week, a group of children from Ida Price Elementary School in San Jose presented $1,069 to Habitat for Humanity’s Silicon Valley Chapter. The kids raised the money by recycling cans and bottles!

The folks from Habitat for Humanity gave the kids a tour of their 6-home build site in San Jose and showed the kids and their teachers the Green innovations happening there. The $1,000 raised by the kids will buy a furnace or small bathroom for one of the homes. A visiting teacher told Habitat “It is really miracle work being done there.”

What a wonderful way to give back.

~ Debbie

Happy Earth Day! Yes, it goes without saying — for those of us at 41pounds.org, every day is Earth Day. Still, it’s a powerful tradition to dedicate a day, week or month (depending on your stamina!) to the planet.

Congratulations to American Forests on your New York Times coverage last Sunday. We are proud to partner with them and excited about the impact we can have by working together.

41pounds.org is helping American Forest plant nearly 4 million trees in sites across twenty states and four continents during 2008 as part of their Global ReLeaf campaign.

When you sign up with 41pounds.org to stop your junk mail, and select American Forests to receive the $15 donation from 41pounds.org, American Forests will plant 15 trees on your behalf. Those 15 trees will absorb five tons of CO2 over a lifetime of 55 years.

That’s a cool way to celebrate Earth Day!

~ Debbie

This week the 7 inspiring people from around the world received the Goldman Environmental Prize. For me, the annual awards ceremony in San Francisco gives me a huge charge of inspiration about what is possible at the grassroots level to lead protect the environment.

These are ordinary individuals who became environmental heroes. Each of them noticed a severe local environmental problem and gathered their friends and neighbors to demand change — usually from government officials or giant corporations. They have devoted incredible passion, smarts and effort to their work. Many past winners have been threatened with death, some have been jailed, some are no longer alive. Their courage and success are truly inspiring. Take a few minutes to watch the powerful videos that tell each winner’s story.

Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza, Ecuador: fighting Chevron to bring justice and environmental recovery to an area devastated by oil pollution.
Feliciano dos Santos, Mozambique: activist-musician who brings education about sanitation and clean water systems through performance and community-based outreach to one of the poorest nations in the world.
Rosa Hilda Ramos, Puerto Rico: a grandmother working to protect a precious marshland.
Jesús León Santos, Mexico: an indigenous Mexican farmer utilizing pre-Columbian agriculture techniques to transform a barren area into rich farmland.
Marina Rikhvanova, Russia: working to protect Siberia’s Lake Baikal from oil and nuclear interests.
Ignace Schops, Belgium: campaigned to secure the country’s first and only national park.

Each prize winner receives $150,000 to support their work. Equally important, they get international visibility and clout that helps advance their cause. Since receiving a Goldman Prize, 8 winners have been appointed or elected to national office in their countries, including several who became ministers of the environment. The 1991 Goldman Prize winner for Africa, Wangari Maathai, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. And, they get the chance to inspire each of us!

~ Carolyn

I’m always amazed by the stories I see about junk mail. Here’s a new one. An Alaskan paper, The Kodiak Daily Mirror, reported that the local post office put out big secure recycling bins for people to dump junk mail — very convenient, right there at the post office. And — no surprise — the bins were used immediately by post office customers throwing out their junk mail. (Did you know that 44% of junk mail goes to the landfill unopened?)

These are special locked bins to replace plain old trash cans, because of local concerns about identity theft. (One local resident reported $6,000 stolen after blank checks sent by a credit card company were snatched from the trash). The identity theft issues apparently justified a grant to buy a $25,000 commercial shredder — to shred the junk mail that’s collected in those secure bins.

Hmmm. For $25,000, they could have paid 41pounds.org to stop the junk mail and catalogs going to 610 households — more than 1/4 of the town! And 41pounds.org would donate more than $9,000 to local environmental and community organizations…

Anyone out there in Kodiak want to stop by the post office?!

~ Debbie

I had a very inspiring experience last week. We were invited to speak at a corporate management meeting about 41pounds.org. The company is ECC. ECC is a global engineering and construction company based just South of San Francisco in Burlingame, California.

This visionary, employee-owned business is doing something really great for its employees: stopping their household junk mail and catalogs with 41pounds.org. Any employee that wishes to, can sign up with 41pounds.org on ECC’s internal website. The company will pay for the 41pounds.org service on behalf of the employee, as part of its efforts to Green the company. And, the $15 donation for each sign up will go to a local environmental organization the company has selected — Sustainable Conservation.

ECC is working towards making a collective difference. And they will. If all 500 of ECC’s domestic employees sign up to stop their junk mail and catalogs with 41pounds.org, collectively, they will preserve 850 trees (that’s about 6 football fields worth of trees). They’ll also conserve 350,000 gallons of water (that’s about 17 1/2 swimming pools of water), and prevent 230,000 pounds of carbon from being released into the air (that’s like taking about 20 cars off the road for an entire year). And, Sustainable Conservation will receive a $7,500 donation.

We wish them success, and thank them for including 41pounds.org in their Green mission! It was a lot of fun to meet and speak to their team. Watch for our blog as we report on their progress.

~ Debbie

We recently learned about a new video, called The Treeless Squirrel (YouTube link). It speaks for itself — about the many benefits that trees bring to all living creatures and critters on this earth (including us).

You may not think that the 1.7 trees that you receive in junk mail each year make a difference — you can just recycle the paper. But did you know that one tree alone can absorb between 120-240 pounds of pollution and gases — like carbon dioxide — per year?. And a single tree produces nearly ¾ of the oxygen required for one person. Those trees work hard for us, not to mention — I like hiking through them! And think about how many animals make trees their homes.

When you sign up with 41pounds.org, in addition to keeping those trees in the forest and out of your mailbox, you can also have trees planted on your behalf. Our three tree planting partners, American Forests, Trees for the Future and Friends of the Urban Forest will plant trees for you if you choose one of their organizations to receive a donation.

The squirrels will thank you!

~ Debbie

Did you know the coupon business generated 302 billion paper coupons last year? And less than 1% are redeemed by the public? In 2007, the printing of free-standing insert coupons (FSI) generated 98.5 billion sheets of paper — which is almost 1.1 million trees.

A company called EZ-PIC offers a paperless coupon that is advertised on retail store shelves and redeemed electronically at check-out. EZ-PIC estimates that if these paperless coupons replaced the current paper system, nearly one million trees would be spared annually. Makes sense to me!

Coupons and junk mail are part of the larger problem — our huge appetite for paper. The paper industry is the fourth-largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among U.S. manufacturing industries, and is one of the world’s largest consumers — and polluters — of fresh water, according to the Environmental Paper Network. Every phase of paper’s lifecycle contributes to global warming, from harvesting trees to production of pulp and paper to eventual disposal.

So, let’s all continue to find ways to print less, waste less…and appreciate the trees!

~ Carolyn

The Washington Post today reported about the Postal Service losing revenue because of . . . drum roll . . . less junk mail!!! Seems the slow economy, and people like us, are making a difference! The Post Office is trying to come up with creative solutions to this problem, like renting out space in Post Offices to businesses (like Starbucks). That’s a decent compromise, as long as people bring their own reusable cups for the coffee . . .

I was impressed with the number of comments this story generated — this is really becoming a heated topic of conversation. As for the concern about loss of jobs in light of the reduction in junk mail, that is a legitimate concern. But, there are Greener solutions out there. Consider the work the Apollo Alliance is doing: creating opportunities and jobs in the new clean energy economy. That’s the way of the future.

We encourage these conversations — but we also encourage creative solutions as we all grapple with the changes being thrust upon us.

This story has me humming that classic Bob Dylan song ~ “The times they are a changing . . . ”

~ Debbie

We just heard about efforts in Aliso Viejo, California (south of L.A.) to fight a proposed U.S. Postal Service facility for sorting junk mail.

Apparently the Postal Service plans to build at least 325,000 square feet of space to house large sorters, and place 75 tractor trailer trucks on the road each day contributing more global warming gasses and air pollution to the region. The rationale? The direct marketers and catalog companies want more access to Southern California consumers.

A City Council member opposing the project says the project may entail 5 large sorters, use over 6 million watts of power each day and use over 20,000 gallons of water daily at the facility.

You can find out more — or get involved — through the city’s website.
www.cityofalisoviejo.com

~ Carolyn