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!

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

Privacy Council wants you to know just how much waste is due to junk mail and catalogs. In a given year, it’s estimated that 19 billion catalogs are mailed to consumers. Of those, 5.6 million tons of catalogs and direct mail ads are put into landfills. That’s so much waste that it’s hard to comprehend! According to Worldwatch Institute (as quoted at Carbonrally.com), the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 30 percent of the world’s paper. Can we recycle it? Sure, but according to the Center for a New American Dream, only 22 percent of junk mail is recycled today. Besides, that doesn’t even begin to address the energy and trees used in making all the junk mail in the first place, then recycling it later. It’s a blow to the environment on several fronts, but you can do something about it.

First, sign up for Privacy Council’s environmentally-friendly service and get yourself removed from the major catalog mailing lists. This will drastically cut the amount of junk mail you receive, so you’ll know you’re doing your part to reduce the paper waste. How much waste can you personally help to prevent? Estimates indicate that, on average, consumers receive 110 catalogs per household per year, so over ten years, you could help to keep more than a thousand catalogs from ending up in a landfill. That makes a real difference.

Also, make sure that you aren’t granting companies the right to sell your contact information to mailing lists when you sign up for a new product or service (check the fine print and opt-out whenever possible). Finally, if you still want to receive a few specific catalogs during the holidays, contact those companies directly and ask them to send you their catalogs, perhaps at a lesser pace (instead of four or five catalogs per company during the holiday season, for example, the company could send you just one or two catalogs). 

‘Tis the season to be festive, but don’t forget about the environment!   

Sources for this article: Center for a New American Dream, Carbonrally, The Virginia Gazette    

• There were 5.8 million tons of catalogs and direct mailings thrown away in the U.S. in 2005, which is enough to fill more than 450,000 garbage trucks. If you park those trucks end to end, the line would stretch from Albuquerque to Atlanta.

• If you combine the energy used in both making and disposing of direct mail, you get more energy than 3 million cars would use. Another report by ForestEthics says that cutting trees and producing junk mail releases the same amount of greenhouse gases as 9 million cars. That would mean that junk mail produces as much pollution as seven U.S. states combined. 

• The amount of direct mail sent in the U.S. has gone up from 35 billion pieces in 1980 to 100 billion pieces in 2005. That means that every man, woman and child in the U.S. gets 300 pieces of junk mail per year.

• Most people spend a total of eight months of their life opening junk mail. That’s just what gets opened; 44% is thrown away unopened.

Had enough? No one wants to spend eight months of their life reading junk mail, and the impact of junk mail on the environment is disturbing.

Want to help? Privacy Council offers a low-cost service to help you remove your name from the major mailing lists, but there are other ways you can contribute to reducing the impact of junk mail on the environment, as well. First, sign the petition at Do Not Mail. This petition is an effort to create a national Do Not Mail Registry that would work the same way as the Do Not Call Registry: merchants would not be permitted to contact people on the registry except in certain circumstances. If such a registry is ever created, it could drastically reduce the amount of junk mail the average person receives, just as the Do Not Call Registry has cut down on telemarketer phone calls.

Second, recycle! Despite myths to the contrary, recycling paper does save more energy than harvesting virgin paper. Make sure you shred any junk mail that has your personal information in it, such as credit card offers, in order to protect your identity. You can use the shreds for packing materials, if you like, but put everything else in the recycling bin. If you’re not sure whether your city recycles or how to get a recycling bin, contact your city office.

Last, try to reduce your overall mail (junk and otherwise) by signing up for paperless service from your bank, cell phone carrier, etc. You can go onto company websites and request that the company stop sending paper statements and instead send you email notifications so that you can conduct business online without handling any paper (or paying for stamps!). This overall reduction in your mail will help keep both your mailbox and our landfills less clogged with paper.

Junk mail may be a curse, but until marketing companies stop using it, there are ways to deal with it. Help the environment (and your own sanity) by trying these tips today.