CHALLENGE!!!

[carynml]

Hear Ye, Hear Ye
All ye great and mightly pagans
Ye worshippers of Earth and the Old Gods
Followers of the path less taken

I Challenge Ye!
In light of our Imbolc prayer "To eliminate unsustainable comsumption"

To take an oath with me at Imbolc
To call every 1-800 number on every piece of junk mail I receive and ask them to take me off their list.

I did a quick calcullation
1 put out about 30lbs of paper every week at least 20lbs is junk mail so let's say 20 lbs a week
-That's 1040 lbs a year.  If one other person does this with me, that's 2080 lbs a year and to that I submit the following

Now if RECYCLING does this:
Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 trees which:
-Absorbs 250 lbs of carbon dioxide from the air each year.  Burning a ton of paper creates 1,500 lbs of carbon dioxide

And it saves:
-7000 gallons of water
-4000 kilowatts of energy
-380 gallons of oil
-and 3 cubic yards of landfill space

If RECYCLING does that, how much more would be saved if that paper were never used, delivered, carried off, and recycled? 

Hmmmmm?  But you know what?  I'd bet that if we could get 15 people to commit to this...we could save 10,000 plus lbs of paper from even having to be recycled.

I throw down the gauntlet!  I call you all pink, pansey, ole lady bloomer wearing sissies if you do not rise to this challenge.   


Ha HA!

[Fiamma]

Er...what lists are you on? Geez...I might get 2-3 piece of junk mail in a really crazy week.

Renee

[carynml]

Someone who has lived at the same address for 8 years. And had 5 other people also living here at various times.  Its easy.

[Fiamma]

Someone who has lived at the same address for 8 years. And had 5 other people also living here at various times.  Its easy.

Ah...ok, I can see that.

[Crystal]

http://www.ehow.com/how_9167_reduce-junk-mail.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Junk-Mail  (what's amusing about this link is at the bottom I'm listed as a co-author since I helped write it )

[jolhoeft]

I'd like to figure out how to stop getting the two different free newspapers that get dropped on my yard each week. That is about equal to the amount of junk mail I get.

[Crystal]

There's part of the second article that I wrote about that very thing actually.

[mimm]

Some websites to help you do this:

http://opt-out.cdt.org/
http://www.optoutprescreen.com

And for those to lazy....I mean, busy...to do it themselves- 41pounds.org

getting off the Direct Marketing Assn. list will cost you $1.

[carynml]

Thanks Crystal, Holly! 

I got on a bunch of those sites yesterday and opted out of a bunch of stuff.
I think I am still going to have to call on all the catelogs I get.  And I need to put a sign up here and the grove space saying "No Free Papers"

We can ask the folks upstairs if they feel the same way, if so we could put just one sign up.

[Zyidzu]

You know I just happened across a website called something like; www.Catalog (something).com  which is a website that claims to do the legwork to remove you from the junk mail list.   I 'think' they indicated the service is free.   Trouble is the magazine I saw it in is at work so I'll see if I can remember to get the full web addy. 

But even better, let me tell you a story I read about (or maybe saw on TV) a couple of years ago about an Englishman that came up with a different solution to the junk mail problem.

He too became bothered by the amount of junk mail he had to go through and throw out and all the waste it was.   But then he got an idea when he saw a device offered in Mother Earth News (or the Whole Earth Catalog) that claimed to be able to roll and compress paper into the equivalent of a log which meant it could be burned like a regular log, putting out a sustained amount of heat instead of just a quick flare up.    He got one and started putting it to work to take care of his piles of junk mail.   Before long he was actually sending and answering junk mail advertisers in order to get them to send him even more junk mail and he found he could actually heat his house with it for the whole winter. 

Think of a source of free fuel instead of waste.   Definitely appears to be a very innovative and ‘green’ solution. 

Although I know there are some drawbacks to this as most junk mail is high color baxter paper.   Unlike newspaper the high color inks and coatings are more polluting and will tend to leave deposits on your chimney that will need extra cleaning.   But this could be considered negotiable when compared to the terrible waste of throwing away all of those trees.
Especially if your house has some means to use a fire for winter heat.

Just some food for thought.

-Z

[carynml]

Another alternative is to shred the paper and compost it down in your compost bin.  A lot of the colors on paper these day are the plant based dyes which are biodegradable.

Unfortunately I don't have a shredder or a chipper to do this.

[Crystal]

Lets put it up on the board as a requested donation

[carynml]

Sure!

[Zyidzu]

Good idea, I've got a little shredder, that is a LITTLE shredder which I've just about worn out.   But I believe in shredding my documents and even stuff that arrives with my name and address printed on it.   ID thief is unfortunately a part of our modern world.   Sometimes makes you wish we could move out into the wilderness somewhere and leave all the mess of modern life behind us.

Then again could I really do without my Internet connection?   Or my D-TV?
*Hehs*  A matter of figuring out how to keep our cake and eat it too I'd say.

-Z

[Pagandenma]

I compost and recycle, so I'm willing to take on taking home some of the paper "waste" from the Grove, if necessary.