The results, which he writes about here, were disheartening: Even after signing up for both of those removal lists, he still received 50 pounds of junk mail and unwanted phone books in a year. His article details the different kinds of junk mail he got and how much of each kind he received, but in the end, he was left with pound after pound of glossy catalogs, credit card offers and other unsolicited mailings.

Durning acknowledges what the rest of us know, as well: getting rid of junk mail is a hassle if you’re trying to do it yourself. Contacting the catalog companies and mailing services, asking them to remove you from lists, can be time-consuming and frustrating. He suggests the national opt-out service to keep people from having to deal with junk mail.

Another option is Privacy Council’s list removal service, which takes you off of all major marketing lists and KEEPS you off of them for a very low cost. You can sign up for the list removal service here and start cutting back on the pain in the neck that junk mail has become!

According to Organicjar.com, if 0.3% of the Saharan Desert was made into a solar plant, “it would produce enough power to provide…Europe with clean renewable energy.” That’s a pretty promising projection, and now, 20 German companies are coming together to try to make such a solar farm possible. The Desertec Foundation is pushing for the alliance so that they can erect the solar plants across northern Africa. If it comes to fruition, this would be the largest solar installation in the world.

Inhabitat reports that this project is still 10-15 years from going online, but getting started now means laying the groundwork for growth. Desertec is not without critics, though… Inhabitat also reports, “Herman Scheer, President of the European Association for Renewable Energy is disappointed that these companies are considering such large scale projects and not distributed generation at the demand centers, and says that the Desertec project is ‘highly problematic’ due to sand storms, dealing with foreign countries, meeting deadlines and so on.” Still, many advocate large-scale projects as the quickest means to resolving the energy crisis, and there’s a chance that solar power from the Sahara is one of the first steps of this kind.

Another way to help with energy problems is to cut the energy we use every day. Turn off lights when you’re not in a room, unplug appliances you don’t need, and cut your junk mail by signing up for the Privacy Council’s list removal service. You’ll save some trees AND some energy; that’s great for the planet! Click here to sign up and get started with doing your part for the planet.

The cap-and-trade bill introduced by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and Edward Markey (D-Mass) would set a limit on the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions while issuing or auctioning greenhouse gas “allowances” that can be bought and sold by people, companies or agencies as needed. Essentially, the bill would make greenhouse gas emitters pay for excessive emissions while providing encouragement for development of alternative energy sources. That extra cost could be passed along to consumers, with the prices of goods and energy potentially going up in price.

A Washington Post-ABC poll showed that 75% of Americans want greenhouse gas regulation, but while that support crosses party lines, it tends to divide by age, with younger Americans more in favor of regulation and cap-and-trade. It also divides by household income, as those who make less money are less inclined to support legislation that could raise prices on necessary goods and services (current estimates say cap-and-trade could cost the average household $175 more per year in 2020). Right now, 62 percent of Americans support regulation even if it raises the cost of goods and services, but that number drops to 56 percent when asked if they would support a $10 increase in utility costs. Still, that’s more than half of Americans willing to pay a little more out of pocket in order to reduce the output of harmful greenhouse gas emissions; that’s a very positive message to those who support “going green” and reducing our carbon footprint.

Some opponents of regulation are opposed simply on principle, believing that the government should not be regulating businesses. Others are opposed because they deny global warming, despite the overwhelming evidence across the scientific community. But in general, the public supports regulation even with the potential costs, and the bill’s sponsors are hoping to get a vote on the legislation before the July 4 holiday. Even President Obama is on board with the bill, saying that it will create jobs in renewable energy technology and help us protect the planet for our children. Sounds like a win-win to us.

Want to do your part to save the planet, cut energy use and go green? Cut down on your junk mail! The average household gets 41 pounds of junk mail a year, and the production and disposal of America’s junk mail uses more energy than 3 million cars! Sign up for the Privacy Council’s List Removal Service and stop getting the junk mail that wastes our energy resources and ends up in our landfills. Do you part today!

The one slight catch: the money can’t be used for just anything. It must be used to buy a new, more fuel-efficient car at a participating dealer, which will have the dual effect of reducing auto emissions across the country and stimulating the struggling car companies. You might call it a win-win, for both the economy and the environment.

The program is expected to start in early August, implemented by the Department of Transportation. Not everyone agrees with the Cash for Clunkers idea, but as the Sacramento Scoop notes, whether you agree or disagree with the bill, Congress is spending a billion dollars on it in an effort to help families, car companies and the planet with one stroke. With any luck, the motivation to trade in old cars for fuel-efficient models will be helpful to those struggling with the rising cost of gas. As the National Automobile Dealers Association noted here, “With more fuel-efficient vehicles on the road, it will also help reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. A spike in new car and truck sales will also help communities that rely on the revenue from vehicle sales taxes and other fees to fill their budget shortfalls.”

Specifics about the Cash for Clunkers program, including a list of qualifying dealers and a chart describing the requirements for trade-in vehicles, can be found at cashforclunkersfacts.com.

And if doing something for the environment appeals to you (but you don’t have an old clunker to trade in), think about signing up for the Privacy Council’s list removal service! You’ll get less junk mail and fewer telemarketing calls, which means less paper in landfills and less stress for you. Sign up today!

One thing each of us can do to help the Earth is cut down on our junk mail. Did you know that 100 million trees are cut down to produce junk mail each year? That’s like cutting down every tree in the Rocky Mountain National Forest every four months. What’s worse, millions of tons of this junk mail ends up in landfills; almost half of junk mail sent is unopened, and most of it is not recycled. Aside from the trees lost and the waste generated, there’s also the energy used to produce and distribute junk mail in the first place: more than 3 million cars’ worth! Almost everything about junk mail is bad for the planet, and Earth Day is the perfect time to cut junk mail from our lives and do our part to help the Earth.

So how do you kick the junk mail habit? Sign up for the Privacy Council’s List Removal Service today and make your own contribution to the reduction of junk mail. When you sign up for the Privacy Council’s service, your name is removed from the major junk mailing lists, making your junk mail drop off and giving the Earth and your mailbox a break. Click here to get started, for Earth Day and every day!

1. Your home – If a wedding announcement is in the newspaper, it essentially tells thieves that the houses belonging to the happy couple, their parents, and other people mentioned in the announcement will be empty during the ceremony and reception. After all, everyone will be celebrating the nuptials. Consider asking a friend or neighbor to watch or sit in the house while you’re gone, just to be safe. If you don’t know anyone who could do the job, local off-duty police officers are sometimes available for a fee.

2. Your email, phone number and postal mail – Wedding planning can mean filling out registries, signing up for offers, going to bridal shows, joining websites… As you navigate the maze of available resources and information, make sure you don’t fill out any requests for your address, phone number or email without knowing how the information will be used. Some contests, vendors and websites will take your information and resell it to third parties who will then use it to bombard you with unwanted communication. If there’s a “send me information” box, make sure it’s not checked. If the fine print says that the company or website can sell your info, don’t give it to them. The odds of winning that honeymoon in Hawaii are far less than the odds that your inbox will be slammed with spam.

3. Your impact on the environment- Many brides are beginning to use electronic invitations, or e-vites, to invite friends and family members to the big event. Since e-vites don’t use paper, they’re far more environmentally-friendly than embossed, gilded paper invites. And they cost little to nothing, unlike paper invitations. If you want your wedding to be as green as possible, e-vites are the way to go. Use a search engine to find one of the many e-vite providers that will work best for you (note: you might want to follow up with phone calls for guests who don’t reply to the e-vite, in case their spam filters are set at high security levels).

4. Your identity- The e-vite idea is great for Mother Earth, but you should probably stop short of posting all of your wedding info on a public website or forum. Many brides create entire websites devoted to their own weddings, but this can backfire significantly. The more you put out there for anyone to see, the easier it is for thieves to steal your identity.

Think of it this way: If you post that Betty Smith is marrying Bob Brown on April 3 in Betty’s hometown of Redbud, IL, and you mention that the couple’s beloved dog, Skipper, will be in the ceremony, and you include the detail about how the bridesmaid’s dresses are Betty’s favorite shade of purple, and you gush about how the couple is so perfect for each other right down to their June birthdays being just a week apart, then you’ve just given thieves almost everything they need to hack a bank or email account. Most sites use security questions such as pet’s name, hometown, birthday, high school mascot and favorite color, all of which were just posted on the wedding website. If you must post information about a wedding to a public site, keep the info as vague and short as possible, and don’t include details that can be used by identity thieves.

5. Your gifts (and your guests’ identities) - When you get married, you get presents. LOTS of presents. And many of those come in the form of personal checks written out to the happy couple. If you’re having a wedding and you receive checks in advance, deposit them as quickly as possible so that they don’t sit around the house to get lost or accidentally thrown out. During the ceremony and reception, have someone appointed as a “gift monitor” to collect and keep watch over the checks and other gifts you receive. That will help minimize the chance that an uninvited guest could attend your party and find a way to slip checks or other small items into his or her pockets. A check stolen by a thief can sometimes be altered and rewritten for a larger amount and to a different recipient, which would create a big banking headache for the person who originally intended to give the check to the bride and groom.

If your ceremony or reception is held in a public place (restaurant, convention center, etc.), you might consider making an announcement telling your guests not to leave their purses or wallets unattended. In a venue where anyone can wander in and pretend to belong, the chance of theft can go up. No one wants to arrive to a wedding as a guest but leave as a victim.

Maybe celebrities do it right when they keep their weddings secret until AFTER the fact! But for the rest of us, a measure of caution and thought in planning for weddings can protect our privacy, our possessions, and our planet.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Privacy Council’s list removal service… Start your life together on a junk-mail-free note!

Of course, some people look for alternative uses for their junk mail and other unwanted materials. We’ve featured articles about junk mail-inspired artwork before, but now, consider this: Recycle Runway, clothing made from recycled goods.

From their website: “Elegant garments created from recycled materials are exhibited in high-traffic airports to grab travelers’ attention and inspire personal action. Community-based presentations and workshops launch young peoples’ imaginations while providing information on how to conserve resources on a grassroots level.”

Their mission is great, but the real fun is looking at the clothes and trying to figure out what each outfit is made of. The dress made from junk mail and catalogs is amazing; see if you can spot it in their gallery.

While the best course of action in dealing with your junk mail is doing what you can to make it stop, such as by signing up for The Privacy Council’s List Removal Service, it’s refreshing to hear about people who find creative uses for the annoying refuse that most people discard. If an unwanted catalog can become a pretty skirt, or a stack of credit card offers can be a work of art, there’s a somewhat positive outcome to the plague of junk mail. Recycle Runway is doing an amazing job of raising awareness and making beauty out of trash.

I don’t think anyone, not even junk mail artists, would argue that junk mail should cease entirely. Do your part and sign up for The Privacy Council’s List Removal Service today.

Chimpanzees are native to Africa, where the ever-increasing human population there is taking a toll on the chimpanzee habitat. Aside from deforestation conducted by farmers, commercial logging is a major threat to chimps. Much of the problem arises when local governments sell forest concessions to timber companies from more “civilized” countries. The companies come into areas such as the Ivory Coast and Zaire and often clear cut the forest land, leaving uninhabitable desert behind. Additionally, the roads that the timber companies cut into the landscape lead illegal “bushmeat” hunters and other poachers to the remote locations where chimps and other animals make their homes. Chimpanzees have a slow reproduction rate and can’t keep up with the loss of their numbers, leading to their presence on the endangered species list.

What does this have to do with the Privacy Council and ending junk mail? Think about where junk mail comes from. 100 million trees are cut down every year to make the unwanted paper that shows up in our mailboxes; that’s the equivalent of the entire Rocky Mountain National Forest every four months. The trees used to make junk mail come from all over the world, and where the timber is harvested, habitats are threatened. Reducing our junk mail doesn’t just remove an annoyance from our lives or keep paper out of landfills… It also preserves the ecosystems that animal species, including endangered species like chimps, rely on worldwide.

Sign up for Privacy Council’s removal service today by clicking here, and do your part to reduce worldwide deforestation. Chimpanzees don’t make good pets, as the events of this week illustrate, but if their habitat continues to dwindle, they won’t have anywhere left to live at all.

The W233 Renew doesn’t take photos. It doesn’t let you access your email. It has a smallish screen and a boring, old-school look. In short, there’s not much that would make this phone stand out, at least at first.

But what makes the Renew special is its impact, or lack thereof, on the environment. The Renew is made of recycled plastic bottles (which uses 20% less energy than standard plastic processing), and the case is 100% recyclable. It’s also carbon-neutral, since Motorola’s alliance with Carbonfund.org offsets the energy needed to make, distribute and use the phone. The Renew can come with up to 2GB of memory, and it has a 9-hour talk time so that the need to charge it regularly is reduced. Even the cardboard packaging is recyclable. And if you decide to recycle your old phone, the Renew comes with a postage-paid envelope that will help you send back your old phone at no cost to you.

Aside from talking, texting and listening to music, the phone doesn’t do much. But that’s probably a good thing. If people used their cell phones less, they’d use less energy keeping them charged and running, which is better for the planet.

On T-Mobile’s website, the Renew MSRP is $59.99, but it costs $9.99 after $50 “instant discount” (read: contract). It probably won’t replace the gadget-heavy, application-ridden cell phones that most people have come to know, love and be addicted to, but for everyday use, it’s a great green choice.

So if you have a T-Mobile account (or feel like getting one), be sure to pick one up. And then register your number with the Do Not Call registry, of course!

The environmentally-friendly house was invented by Gerd Niemoeller and produced by his Swiss company The Wall AG. The German development aid agency GTZ and architect Dirk Donath from the Bauhaus University in Weimar contributed to the development of the Universal World House, as well. The house can be a home for up to eight people and includes a shower and lavatory. It is assembled quickly and easily almost anywhere, and it’s earthquake-proof. And lest anyone think that the recycled paper walls will melt in the first rainfall, worry not: the house’s construction uses a heated, pressurized honeycomb method that makes the house both durable and insulated against the elements. Simply put, this little wonder turns our paper waste into a higher standard of living for the underprivileged around the world.

“People don’t want to flee their countries, they’ve been driven to leave their homes out of the need to survive,” Niemoeller told The Times Online. “The number of migrants, refugees living in improvised housing, is going to grow with climate change, and we offer an alternative.” No longer will lean-tos of scrap metal be the only resource for poor or displaced people seeking shelter.

Nigeria and Angola have already placed orders for some of these Universal World Houses, and other countries and organizations are sure to follow. Future plans may include sending the construction machines themselves, along with the raw materials, to the various countries so that the homes can be made and put to use on the spot (and so that local jobs can be created in the process). And if the need for the homes declines, no worries; the houses themselves are recyclable.

Alternative and affordable housing for anyone who needs or wants it, in any part of the world, made possible in part by recycled paper. So don’t stop recycling those newspapers anytime soon! It’s not just saving the planet… It’s saving the people who live here, too.

Sources for this article: Gizmodo, The Times Online