Blog: Green Forests, Cool Planet

I found some great websites offering clear and easy instructions for art projects using recycled newsprint, junk mail, or other scrap paper.

EcoKids is a program of Earth Day Canada offering environmental information and educational resources for teachers and kids around the world. Their website includes instructions for making paper out of recycled paper using recycled newspaper or other scrap paper, water, a blender, and vegetable dye (or leaves!). What a great, fun way to teach kids about recycling and the need to keep trees in our forests!

Junk Mail Jems is a company that not only sells unique gift items made from junk mail, but also shares some of the tricks of the trade with us. Their website includes a do-it-yourself page that provides instructions for innovative ways of reusing junk mail. Though I will have to search far and wide for junk mail scraps around my house (I’m a subscriber to the 41pounds.org junk mail reduction service), I love the Junk Mail Jems instructions for how to make your own junk mail gift bag.

Can you imagine it? Beautiful hand made recycled paper delivered in a one-of-a-kind recycled gift bag. I know what I’m doing with my kids this weekend…

~Margie

The US Postal Service is proposing cutting back its delivery service from six to five days per week. Which day would be cut from the delivery schedule is not yet known, but I’ve read Saturday or Tuesday. The reason? Budget crisis – an issue not new to the US Post office.

Whatever the reasoning, at this day in age, I think this reduction in the mail delivery schedule makes great sense. Many people today are using the internet to connect with friends and family, to receive and pay bills, and to learn about new products and ideas. In fact, in 2008, the US Postal Service delivered 9 billion fewer pieces of mail compared to 2007. Though not so great for the postmaster, this is clearly great news for trees! Cutting back delivery service will, I hope, encourage the use of modern communication technology, making us all less dependent on paper mail, and improving our environment. Think about the C02 emissions from all of the little (and big) mail trucks that wouldn’t be making their way around our neighborhoods and across our states on Saturdays (or Tuesdays).

Flatbed Press in Austin, Texas opened an exhibit earlier this month by artist Annette Lawrence that highlights the amount of junk mail that one person receives over the course of a year. The exhibit, called “Free Paper,” displays the artist’s junk mail shredded into two-inch wide strips and then stacked in 12 piles — one for each month of 2008. The total weight of all of her junk mail is 265 pounds. The tallest (and heaviest) stacks of junk mail are around the winter holidays.

Because I like things to be generally nice and tidy, I find the stacks oddly comforting to look at, almost beautiful. (Granted, I have only seen images of the exhibit via the Internet.) Still, the message behind the artwork is clear. In an interview with KXAN, a local Austin news channel, Lawrence says that she wants visitors to the exhibit to take a way a sense of “wow, that’s a lot of paper.”

And a lot of paper it is!

If you’re in Austin, check out the exhibit, which runs through February 6th at Flatbed Press and let us know what you think!

Have you been doing some online holiday shopping recently? I have. Just last weekend I sat in front of the computer with my sons’ Christmas lists and started shopping. Walkie-talkies, monster trucks, and a chess set — my kids will be pleased. And since I was feeling generous, I also bought myself a subscription to a new gourmet cooking magazine.

This is not only the time of year when we pull out our credit cards and spread holiday cheer, but it’s also the time when many of us tend to spread our name and address around…and around. That toy company I just purchased walkie-talkies from, they have my name and address now. And that cooking magazine I just subscribed to, well they have my name and address too. I’ve just been listed, again. Both the toy company and the magazine publisher are going to rent or sell their list to others and then suddenly I will start to get catalogs in the mail from all kinds of companies — trying to sell me more toys, kitchen utensils and dried fruit.

The best way to avoid the catalog deluge is to make one simple request each time you buy something — whether online or by phone or in the store. Tell the company not to send you any of their catalogs AND not to rent, sell, or trade my name and address.

And remember, if you’re a 41pounds.org customer, anytime you get a catalog in the mail that you don’t want, simply contact 41pounds.org and tell them to get you off that company’s list.

~ Margie

Over the last two years, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has saved $10 million by consolidating delivery trips, thanks to a new transportation optimization system. The savings came from a very limited number of test markets, so the national potential for cost savings is much, much higher.

This is important to the fight against junk mail since USPS depends heavily on revenue from marketing mail, and cites financial concerns whenever someone proposes new rules or pricing for catalogs and direct mail. And, USPS estimates that for every 1-cent increase in gas prices, it pays $8 million a year, so budgets are strained these days

USPS has been using the Highway Corridor Analytic Program (HCAP), created in conjunction with IBM (PDF), since 2006. Developed with the ILOG CPLEX optimization software, the program helps the USPS determine the best way to allocate mail among its transportation resources. Using the HCAP, the USPS inputs its existing network and routes, and sets constraints such as pickup and delivery times, truck capacity and start and end points. The program analyzes existing operations and figures out alternative loads and routes to reduce costs.

USPS piloted the program in select areas, finding savings of $1.3 million annually in Chicago, $3.7 million annually on the West Coast and $400,000 annually in Greensboro and Pittsburgh, adding up to more than $5 million and about 615,000 gallons of gasoline saved a year. USPS plans to continue using the program to develop efficient routes and loads elsewhere.

Let’s hope the next step for USPS is to upgrade its fleet to get off of gasoline!

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’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

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