This is sort of a cop-out as a blog post, but I really think that the Onion captures the destructive force of nonchalance and false justification.
Click here to read the Jan 19, 2010 article: 'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder
It's funny because nearly every single one of us is guilty of at least one of those thoughts -- and we know it. It's not the behavior that really needs attention, it's the attitude behind it. Once you turn nonchalance into a sincere care for the Earth, you won't need to force behaviors down throats in order to get people to choose what's best for themselves. Recycling and reducing consumption will be an absolute must, and it will be by popular demand.
That's what the Earth really needs. It really just needs its people to care about it. A lot. Maybe just as much as - or more than - they care about themselves.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
A happy little joyful thing
A monarch caterpillar!
Which I found at work. (I'm a part-time naturalist.) (Which is not the same as being a nudist, which one or two of the pastors at church may erroneously believe.)
I get real wrapped up in how terrible everything is going for the environment, and I'm pretty sure that's not really healthy. So it's good when I just get a little moment to just feel some joy without any guilt or anger attached to it.
And look! There it is. A little bit of joy, just crawling along a leaf of milkweed. He gets to eat, and eat, and eat, and then he melts down and re-forms and BAM, butterfly wings. And let's face it, no one else could pull off that fashion statement. Just sayin'.
Which I found at work. (I'm a part-time naturalist.) (Which is not the same as being a nudist, which one or two of the pastors at church may erroneously believe.)
I get real wrapped up in how terrible everything is going for the environment, and I'm pretty sure that's not really healthy. So it's good when I just get a little moment to just feel some joy without any guilt or anger attached to it.
And look! There it is. A little bit of joy, just crawling along a leaf of milkweed. He gets to eat, and eat, and eat, and then he melts down and re-forms and BAM, butterfly wings. And let's face it, no one else could pull off that fashion statement. Just sayin'.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Corporate Lies
Today, I took an hour to enjoy the weather. Hurricane Earl swooped by last week, and ever since, it's been windy, dry, and decidedly NOT boiling hot. So it actually feels like autumn. I really love autumn. Mostly what I love is going hiking along streams or creeks in autumn. It's something about the wind and the water moving, and the leaves blowing in the wind and falling in the creek, and everything pretty and jolly but kind of melancholy all at once.
So I came home, feeling like planet Earth is pretty cool, and I decided to go tend my gosh-darn compost for once. I started composting about a year ago. I live in a row of townhouses with about ten square feet of backyard, so a for-real compost heap is more or less out of the question. But I do have a little space out there, and that's all I need. I got two five-gallon buckets from Home Depot, drilled drainage holes in the bottom and aeration holes in the sides along the top, and set 'em on some bricks (for aeration) under the deck. They're hardly noticeable (not even smellable, either) and it cost all of $10. As a result of composting, too, my garbage never smells -- I mostly only throw away the occasional sheet of plastic packaging. I feel pretty smug when I think about them composters.
Not only did I have to make them, I had to learn how to compost. Because having a composter and learning how to compost are actually two different things. There are rules to things going in the composter. Like, more "dries" than "wets," more "browns" than "greens," no dairy and no meat, only raw things. Oh, and ya gotta stir it up every day, for those little containers.
Now, do I stir it every day? No. Maybe like every week. I'm not a compost saint, unfortunately. But whatever. Basically, it goes like this: put wet stuff in the repurposed yogurt container 'till it's full, then take that out to the compost bucket. Stir it up when I get around to it. Dump dry leaves in there every once in awhile.
Oh, the dry leaves are what makes it great, though. I was thinking about how autumn is going to help me out with my dry leaf stash. You can evidently use straw, or even newspaper, for "dry" things, to keep the moisture level. (I've heard it's supposed to be "like a damp sponge.") But I just use dry leaves that I keep in some garbage bags in the garage. And man, those leaves smell really great. I'm not kidding. It's like potpurri. So I'm excited about having more dry leaves to keep in my garage.
Anyway, I was in there composting today, and I noticed something. The stupid Sun Chips bag STILL has not composted.
I think I put it in there before Shane left in July. If you've bought Sun Chips in the last year, you know what I mean. They did something to make their bags SUPER CRINKLY LOUD. BUT, they say, IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE COMPOSTABLE!!
Apparently the statement only applies under very specific conditions. I want you to know that my composting repertoire is expansive... an entire spaghetti squash, pumpkin skin, cobs from corn, eggshells... so baby, it's you, not me. Darn you, Sun Chips. Darn you and your stupid loud bags that don't even compost under conditions you can recreate on planet Earth.
Well, anyway. That was corporate lie #1.
Corporate lie #2 isn't so much a lie as... the Money Mailer people trying to be misleading. I've entered another phase of trying to minimize my junk mail, and I've done pretty good. I called the number you can call to have credit card companies quit sending you stuff (1-888-567-8688, read about that here if you didn't know), and I even got those junk newspapers to quit arriving at my door (the solution was a 2'x3' sign taped to my garage door: DO NOT DELIVER NEWSPAPERS HERE).
Then I got the Money Mailer. Oh, man. It irks me because it's all just designed to entice you into spending money, not really saving you anything. I'm a freakishly conservative spender, so I hate the Money Mailer as a matter of that principle as well as the environmental front.
It says (in size 4 font on the very bottom) that you can go to their website to remove your address from the mailing list. Yay, says I! I'll go do that! So I go do it. And right on the site is this little plea from the poor, poor corporation that says: "Before submitting your information, please take a moment to review the impact of direct mail and myths and realities about advertising mail and the environment."
I think of myself as open-minded, so I decided to try to read what they had to say as objectively as I could. And it was really hard and I didn't actually read it with any objectivity 'till about the third time around. But I think I did it. I decided, just for fun, to see what exactly they were saying.
Here is one of their claims:
"Discarded direct mail represents just 2.4% of municipal solid waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the recycling recovery rate has grown nearly 700% since 1990."
1) The EPA reported in 2008 that Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash (municipal solid waste). 54% of that (135 million tons) actually went to the landfill; the rest of it was recycled and composted. I'm not sure as to whether they meant MSW that went to the landfill, or total MSW. But let's be generous and assume it was MSW that made it to the landfill (because we're nice people, really). 2.4% of 135 million is 3.24 million. (Did I do that math right?) So, 3 and a quarter million tons of trash is like, no big deal, apparently.
[If you're wondering -- using the other figure, it's 6 million tons.]
2) Any avid environmentalist will tell you that the saying is "Reduce, reuse, recycle," in that order, because the terms decrease in effectiveness in that order. The best thing you can do is reduce your waste. The second-best is to reuse. The third-best thing is recycling, and some people (me included) will gently remind you that recycling is really not doing as much as you believe it's doing.
Even though I was completely convinced by this fabulously clever information that I should definitely continue to receive the Money Mailers that I never even open, I decided to take myself off the list anyway.
So I came home, feeling like planet Earth is pretty cool, and I decided to go tend my gosh-darn compost for once. I started composting about a year ago. I live in a row of townhouses with about ten square feet of backyard, so a for-real compost heap is more or less out of the question. But I do have a little space out there, and that's all I need. I got two five-gallon buckets from Home Depot, drilled drainage holes in the bottom and aeration holes in the sides along the top, and set 'em on some bricks (for aeration) under the deck. They're hardly noticeable (not even smellable, either) and it cost all of $10. As a result of composting, too, my garbage never smells -- I mostly only throw away the occasional sheet of plastic packaging. I feel pretty smug when I think about them composters.
Not only did I have to make them, I had to learn how to compost. Because having a composter and learning how to compost are actually two different things. There are rules to things going in the composter. Like, more "dries" than "wets," more "browns" than "greens," no dairy and no meat, only raw things. Oh, and ya gotta stir it up every day, for those little containers.
Now, do I stir it every day? No. Maybe like every week. I'm not a compost saint, unfortunately. But whatever. Basically, it goes like this: put wet stuff in the repurposed yogurt container 'till it's full, then take that out to the compost bucket. Stir it up when I get around to it. Dump dry leaves in there every once in awhile.
Oh, the dry leaves are what makes it great, though. I was thinking about how autumn is going to help me out with my dry leaf stash. You can evidently use straw, or even newspaper, for "dry" things, to keep the moisture level. (I've heard it's supposed to be "like a damp sponge.") But I just use dry leaves that I keep in some garbage bags in the garage. And man, those leaves smell really great. I'm not kidding. It's like potpurri. So I'm excited about having more dry leaves to keep in my garage.
Anyway, I was in there composting today, and I noticed something. The stupid Sun Chips bag STILL has not composted.
I think I put it in there before Shane left in July. If you've bought Sun Chips in the last year, you know what I mean. They did something to make their bags SUPER CRINKLY LOUD. BUT, they say, IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE COMPOSTABLE!!
Apparently the statement only applies under very specific conditions. I want you to know that my composting repertoire is expansive... an entire spaghetti squash, pumpkin skin, cobs from corn, eggshells... so baby, it's you, not me. Darn you, Sun Chips. Darn you and your stupid loud bags that don't even compost under conditions you can recreate on planet Earth.
Well, anyway. That was corporate lie #1.
Corporate lie #2 isn't so much a lie as... the Money Mailer people trying to be misleading. I've entered another phase of trying to minimize my junk mail, and I've done pretty good. I called the number you can call to have credit card companies quit sending you stuff (1-888-567-8688, read about that here if you didn't know), and I even got those junk newspapers to quit arriving at my door (the solution was a 2'x3' sign taped to my garage door: DO NOT DELIVER NEWSPAPERS HERE).
Then I got the Money Mailer. Oh, man. It irks me because it's all just designed to entice you into spending money, not really saving you anything. I'm a freakishly conservative spender, so I hate the Money Mailer as a matter of that principle as well as the environmental front.
It says (in size 4 font on the very bottom) that you can go to their website to remove your address from the mailing list. Yay, says I! I'll go do that! So I go do it. And right on the site is this little plea from the poor, poor corporation that says: "Before submitting your information, please take a moment to review the impact of direct mail and myths and realities about advertising mail and the environment."
I think of myself as open-minded, so I decided to try to read what they had to say as objectively as I could. And it was really hard and I didn't actually read it with any objectivity 'till about the third time around. But I think I did it. I decided, just for fun, to see what exactly they were saying.
Here is one of their claims:
"Discarded direct mail represents just 2.4% of municipal solid waste, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the recycling recovery rate has grown nearly 700% since 1990."
1) The EPA reported in 2008 that Americans generated about 250 million tons of trash (municipal solid waste). 54% of that (135 million tons) actually went to the landfill; the rest of it was recycled and composted. I'm not sure as to whether they meant MSW that went to the landfill, or total MSW. But let's be generous and assume it was MSW that made it to the landfill (because we're nice people, really). 2.4% of 135 million is 3.24 million. (Did I do that math right?) So, 3 and a quarter million tons of trash is like, no big deal, apparently.
[If you're wondering -- using the other figure, it's 6 million tons.]
2) Any avid environmentalist will tell you that the saying is "Reduce, reuse, recycle," in that order, because the terms decrease in effectiveness in that order. The best thing you can do is reduce your waste. The second-best is to reuse. The third-best thing is recycling, and some people (me included) will gently remind you that recycling is really not doing as much as you believe it's doing.
Even though I was completely convinced by this fabulously clever information that I should definitely continue to receive the Money Mailers that I never even open, I decided to take myself off the list anyway.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Promises, promises.
So, that whole "hey I'll update this once a week" thing. Yeah. I know.
Whatever.
Anyway, the pumpkins are all dead. My bust. It's been an insane week. It was the last week of my job, plus I housesat/dogsat/catsat/normalsat for the entire week. It really made me rethink the whole "ever having a pet" thing. Don't get me wrong. I love dogs. Cats are okay, but dogs. Yes.
However, dogs require work. Cats require work (but less than dogs). Fish require work. And even stupid baby pumpkin seedlings require work. Time, energy, money. And right now, I'm just this insane woman. Energy I've got, but expendable income, not so much, and time, well, time's a funny thing. Time is one of my most precious and most squandered resources, by far.
It sort of depresses me that I can't do everything I want, but it's the truth. I have to make lists of everything I want to do and prioritize the top three. I eliminate about ten things every time I do this.
My basic realization, at this point, is that I was so busy that I couldn't even spare five minutes to come to my own house once or twice during the week to water my baby pumpkin seedlings. I really cared about them, but I failed to prioritize. Either that, or I did prioritize in a sort of crude fashion.
It's sometimes difficult to remember that caring for Earth belongs on the priority list, and is worthy of my time. Worthy of the extra minutes spent going to the farmer's market instead of the grocery store. Worthy of making the effort to learn a new recipe that includes local produce.
It's quite hard, though. Life bears down on you sometimes.
At this point, I'm rambling... smell ya later.
Whatever.
Anyway, the pumpkins are all dead. My bust. It's been an insane week. It was the last week of my job, plus I housesat/dogsat/catsat/normalsat for the entire week. It really made me rethink the whole "ever having a pet" thing. Don't get me wrong. I love dogs. Cats are okay, but dogs. Yes.
However, dogs require work. Cats require work (but less than dogs). Fish require work. And even stupid baby pumpkin seedlings require work. Time, energy, money. And right now, I'm just this insane woman. Energy I've got, but expendable income, not so much, and time, well, time's a funny thing. Time is one of my most precious and most squandered resources, by far.
It sort of depresses me that I can't do everything I want, but it's the truth. I have to make lists of everything I want to do and prioritize the top three. I eliminate about ten things every time I do this.
My basic realization, at this point, is that I was so busy that I couldn't even spare five minutes to come to my own house once or twice during the week to water my baby pumpkin seedlings. I really cared about them, but I failed to prioritize. Either that, or I did prioritize in a sort of crude fashion.
It's sometimes difficult to remember that caring for Earth belongs on the priority list, and is worthy of my time. Worthy of the extra minutes spent going to the farmer's market instead of the grocery store. Worthy of making the effort to learn a new recipe that includes local produce.
It's quite hard, though. Life bears down on you sometimes.
At this point, I'm rambling... smell ya later.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Not that I'll get any pumpkins, but hey
I had these apple seedlings. I loved them. I really did. I tried to nourish them as best I could, but I was a novice and they were high-maintenance and, well, none of them is still with me today. I had one seedling that was a few months old, and I felt pretty good in spite of the other fifty that I lost. Unfortunately, it decided that it was going to ditch all its leaves for no reason. I was wondering if maybe the poor thing thought that it was fall or something. In any case, it never came back.
The whole affair left me sort of disheartened. I have some mint, which is near impossible to destroy; I have some coneflower and black-eyed susans in the front garden, which are native to this area; I have some lavender that didn't bloom, a parsley plant, and a random strawberry plant.
But I've still never started anything from seed, which is what I want to do. Next year, I hope to actually have a garden with real vegetables in it. Or maybe do some container gardening. Anyway, you get the picture: I'm a little self-conscious about my inability to raise anything from seed.
So, I decided to try and sprout these pumpkin seeds. I know I'm late by at least a month. I know that in all likelihood, I won't get any pumpkins. But I took some heart from the fact that these might be easier to grow, being a native North American vegetable and all. I just want them to go as far as they can 'till the frost sets back in. I just want to be a good plant mommy.
I guess I need to plant them somewhere... soon...
The whole affair left me sort of disheartened. I have some mint, which is near impossible to destroy; I have some coneflower and black-eyed susans in the front garden, which are native to this area; I have some lavender that didn't bloom, a parsley plant, and a random strawberry plant.
But I've still never started anything from seed, which is what I want to do. Next year, I hope to actually have a garden with real vegetables in it. Or maybe do some container gardening. Anyway, you get the picture: I'm a little self-conscious about my inability to raise anything from seed.
So, I decided to try and sprout these pumpkin seeds. I know I'm late by at least a month. I know that in all likelihood, I won't get any pumpkins. But I took some heart from the fact that these might be easier to grow, being a native North American vegetable and all. I just want them to go as far as they can 'till the frost sets back in. I just want to be a good plant mommy.
I guess I need to plant them somewhere... soon...
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Come on back now, ya'll, y'hear?
I was visited by one Dan White the other day week who said to me, "hey, why haven't you updated your blog?"
I said, I don't know, I guess I wrote in it mostly so I wouldn't go completely insane at work.
He said, well, I was reading that. (Which strikes me a bit funny, 'cause seriously, who reads this thing?) So go update it.
Life is crazy-crazy for just about everyone I know, including me, so that's not really an excuse. I guess, if anything, here's my excuse:
I messed up.
I started not really caring, or backsliding, or rationalizing. And I think this happens every once in awhile to anyone who cares about planet Earth. "Well, it's all going to pot anyway, I'll just go out to Chinese and get the leftovers in that stupid little wax paper container that you can't recycle or reuse. There's no way I can change the millions of minds who are set on the inadvertent destruction of the planet -- plus, it's not like I'm polluting or something terrible like that."
But you know, God has a funny way of bringing me back. I was actually reading Romans the other day. 'Till now, I haven't done much Bible study on my own, 'cause the Bible I was using was like, I don't know, like two gears with mismatched teeth. But this one, I got at Camp Josiah last month, and it's much easier on my poor little brain.
Anyway, in there (around Romans 14) it says things like, "If you think some foods are unfit to eat, then for you they are not fit." and "Don't let your appetite destroy what God has done. All foods are fit to eat, but it is wrong to cause problems for others by what you eat."
Now, I know (think?) Paul is really just talking about unity between the different cultures who became followers of Jesus (i.e. "hey guys, quit picking on each other, Jesus said it's okay to eat whatever, but just because Sammy eats only kosher stuff doesn't mean that you get to pick on him"). But to me, it was a pretty stern reminder about how I really feel about the environment. It's pretty clear to me. Don't let your consumerism destroy creation. Don't choose products that dishonor or steal dignity from the lives of other people. Remember how you don't actually think it's okay to eat processed things? D'you know how much that's tearing you up inside under the thin sheet of numbness you've laid down in there? Gosh, Em, seriously.
So. I had to chuckle a bit to myself. Yep, I've gone astray a little here. Yep, I need to come back. Yep, I should take the extra half-hour and the ten extra bucks to shop at the co-op or the farmer's market instead of going to Safeway or Acme.
Still haven't done it yet, but at least I'm getting back to on track.
Anyway, my new goal is to update this puppy at least once a week... let's see how it turns out.
I said, I don't know, I guess I wrote in it mostly so I wouldn't go completely insane at work.
He said, well, I was reading that. (Which strikes me a bit funny, 'cause seriously, who reads this thing?) So go update it.
Life is crazy-crazy for just about everyone I know, including me, so that's not really an excuse. I guess, if anything, here's my excuse:
I messed up.
I started not really caring, or backsliding, or rationalizing. And I think this happens every once in awhile to anyone who cares about planet Earth. "Well, it's all going to pot anyway, I'll just go out to Chinese and get the leftovers in that stupid little wax paper container that you can't recycle or reuse. There's no way I can change the millions of minds who are set on the inadvertent destruction of the planet -- plus, it's not like I'm polluting or something terrible like that."
But you know, God has a funny way of bringing me back. I was actually reading Romans the other day. 'Till now, I haven't done much Bible study on my own, 'cause the Bible I was using was like, I don't know, like two gears with mismatched teeth. But this one, I got at Camp Josiah last month, and it's much easier on my poor little brain.
Anyway, in there (around Romans 14) it says things like, "If you think some foods are unfit to eat, then for you they are not fit." and "Don't let your appetite destroy what God has done. All foods are fit to eat, but it is wrong to cause problems for others by what you eat."
Now, I know (think?) Paul is really just talking about unity between the different cultures who became followers of Jesus (i.e. "hey guys, quit picking on each other, Jesus said it's okay to eat whatever, but just because Sammy eats only kosher stuff doesn't mean that you get to pick on him"). But to me, it was a pretty stern reminder about how I really feel about the environment. It's pretty clear to me. Don't let your consumerism destroy creation. Don't choose products that dishonor or steal dignity from the lives of other people. Remember how you don't actually think it's okay to eat processed things? D'you know how much that's tearing you up inside under the thin sheet of numbness you've laid down in there? Gosh, Em, seriously.
So. I had to chuckle a bit to myself. Yep, I've gone astray a little here. Yep, I need to come back. Yep, I should take the extra half-hour and the ten extra bucks to shop at the co-op or the farmer's market instead of going to Safeway or Acme.
Still haven't done it yet, but at least I'm getting back to on track.
Anyway, my new goal is to update this puppy at least once a week... let's see how it turns out.
Friday, February 5, 2010
My battle with junk mail
I've been fighting a battle ever since I moved to Newark.
It's against the junk mail. And the junk newspapers.
Due to the nature of my residence, the battle has been fought on multiple fronts. One: I now live relatively close to a real city, after growing up in rural PA. For some reason, being in a city means that it's permissible for local businesses to give massive amounts of brochures and coupon books to the "postmaster" (who I imagine must be a shadowy figure who lurches around darkened rooms in post offices across the nation) to distribute to everyone in the city. You can imagine that this doesn't sit well with me.
I can remember having this issue at college, too. When you have an on-campus mailbox, you get flyers from on-campus groups who are trying to drum up an interest in an event or in their own membership.
Point being, I don't care about your event and I don't want to buy wings from Pizza Place #71 on some special Superbowl deal. I consider myself a fairly conservative spender. Heck, I turned off my heat because of the last electric bill... ("hmm... do I really need heat?" ...more on that later). So I don't care about Clipper Magazine or Redplum, and I get sort of annoyed with them for sending me shredded trees in the mail.
I actually did get Redplum to stop via their website. Everything else, I'm sort of at a loss. There must be a way to simply notify this... "Postmaster" character... that I don't want this stuff. Or maybe there's not. Maybe you just have to unsubscribe from every single annoying thing, like with e-mail. UGH. The battle continues on this front.
Front number 2: I live in a place that has been inhabited by people other than me in the last few years. This situation applies to almost anyone who rents. You get junk mail from people who don't live there anymore. Pep Boys has been sending these great coupons for a man whose name I could barely pronounce.
I called them up, and told them that they'd been sending coupons to my address for a man who didn't live there. They said, thanks for reporting it! It's no biggie. The coupons are still on his account, so he can access them in places other than the mail.
No, I said. I want you to stop sending them. Confusion ensued. I tried to explain that I was an "environmentally conscious" individual. Confusion ensued. Basically, they told me I'd have to get in touch with the post office. This is really bizarre to me, but evidently they can't change someone's account unless that someone calls and specifically changes the address. So, basically, if there's someone in the world you really don't like, go to Pep Boys, make up a fake name, register as a member and give them your adversary's address. And then do it a bunch of times in other Pep Boys.
I've also been trying to get Yes! and Crossroads, of The News Journal here in Delaware, to stop showing up at my house. I can tell you the exact dialogue I've had three times over the phone with these guys:
"Hello, this is the News Journal, can I please have your phone number to better assist you?"
"Yeah, you can have it, but I don't have an account with you guys."
"All right, how can I help you?"
"I'd like to stop receiving Yes! and Crossroads at my house. I've already called (X times), and I am continuing to receive them."
"Okay, let me get your address..."
So far, (X) = 3. I dearly hope it won't have to be 4.
There are some good resources online to help reduce your junk mail package, and the statistics they use are staggering. According to ecocycle.org (and some other sites), junk mail in 2005 used up about 100 million trees. That's too many. Even if they're using recycled paper, there are hazards in the ink. I doubt they're all using soy-based, and even if they are, it's an appalling use of something that is generally food.
(I honestly can't get behind too many processes that make food into non-food. Disposable containers made of potatoes are great, but I can't help but think of the hungry people in the world who would have loved to eat those potatoes. It's the kind of affluence that seems so inconsequential, but still sort of disturbs me.)
Anywho, there are some tips online that you can find with a minimal amount of searching, and you can even hire services to proactively reduce junk mail being sent to your house... but really, should we have to pay to defend the planet? I think that generally, when a thing defends our planet, it also tends to put my penny-pinching mind at ease. Most solutions for our environmental troubles do end up cutting us a deal in the long run -- and often, even in the short run!
It's against the junk mail. And the junk newspapers.
Due to the nature of my residence, the battle has been fought on multiple fronts. One: I now live relatively close to a real city, after growing up in rural PA. For some reason, being in a city means that it's permissible for local businesses to give massive amounts of brochures and coupon books to the "postmaster" (who I imagine must be a shadowy figure who lurches around darkened rooms in post offices across the nation) to distribute to everyone in the city. You can imagine that this doesn't sit well with me.
I can remember having this issue at college, too. When you have an on-campus mailbox, you get flyers from on-campus groups who are trying to drum up an interest in an event or in their own membership.
Point being, I don't care about your event and I don't want to buy wings from Pizza Place #71 on some special Superbowl deal. I consider myself a fairly conservative spender. Heck, I turned off my heat because of the last electric bill... ("hmm... do I really need heat?" ...more on that later). So I don't care about Clipper Magazine or Redplum, and I get sort of annoyed with them for sending me shredded trees in the mail.
I actually did get Redplum to stop via their website. Everything else, I'm sort of at a loss. There must be a way to simply notify this... "Postmaster" character... that I don't want this stuff. Or maybe there's not. Maybe you just have to unsubscribe from every single annoying thing, like with e-mail. UGH. The battle continues on this front.
Front number 2: I live in a place that has been inhabited by people other than me in the last few years. This situation applies to almost anyone who rents. You get junk mail from people who don't live there anymore. Pep Boys has been sending these great coupons for a man whose name I could barely pronounce.
I called them up, and told them that they'd been sending coupons to my address for a man who didn't live there. They said, thanks for reporting it! It's no biggie. The coupons are still on his account, so he can access them in places other than the mail.
No, I said. I want you to stop sending them. Confusion ensued. I tried to explain that I was an "environmentally conscious" individual. Confusion ensued. Basically, they told me I'd have to get in touch with the post office. This is really bizarre to me, but evidently they can't change someone's account unless that someone calls and specifically changes the address. So, basically, if there's someone in the world you really don't like, go to Pep Boys, make up a fake name, register as a member and give them your adversary's address. And then do it a bunch of times in other Pep Boys.
I've also been trying to get Yes! and Crossroads, of The News Journal here in Delaware, to stop showing up at my house. I can tell you the exact dialogue I've had three times over the phone with these guys:
"Hello, this is the News Journal, can I please have your phone number to better assist you?"
"Yeah, you can have it, but I don't have an account with you guys."
"All right, how can I help you?"
"I'd like to stop receiving Yes! and Crossroads at my house. I've already called (X times), and I am continuing to receive them."
"Okay, let me get your address..."
So far, (X) = 3. I dearly hope it won't have to be 4.
There are some good resources online to help reduce your junk mail package, and the statistics they use are staggering. According to ecocycle.org (and some other sites), junk mail in 2005 used up about 100 million trees. That's too many. Even if they're using recycled paper, there are hazards in the ink. I doubt they're all using soy-based, and even if they are, it's an appalling use of something that is generally food.
(I honestly can't get behind too many processes that make food into non-food. Disposable containers made of potatoes are great, but I can't help but think of the hungry people in the world who would have loved to eat those potatoes. It's the kind of affluence that seems so inconsequential, but still sort of disturbs me.)
Anywho, there are some tips online that you can find with a minimal amount of searching, and you can even hire services to proactively reduce junk mail being sent to your house... but really, should we have to pay to defend the planet? I think that generally, when a thing defends our planet, it also tends to put my penny-pinching mind at ease. Most solutions for our environmental troubles do end up cutting us a deal in the long run -- and often, even in the short run!
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