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Earth Day, Every Day!

April 22nd is the day of global observance originated by Gaylord Nelson that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. In celebration, here are a few things that you can do to be kind to Mother Earth:

  • Use sturdy cloth or mesh reusable totes instead of paper or plastic shopping bags. Paper bags are more energy and resource intensive than plastic bags, but plastic generates even more air and water pollution.
  • Turn off electronics when not in use. Studies show that using Energy Star computers and other business machines can conserve up to 75% of electricity compared to standard equipment.
  • Look into a different mode of transportation. Every gallon of gasoline your car burns emits about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. Try carpooling, mass transit, biking to work or school, and walking whenever possible, even just one day per week.
  • If you travel a lot, think about offsetting your own carbon output. There are several cool sites: www.carbonfund.org, www.savegreenearth.com; now even Expedia and Travelocity offer offsets.
  • Reduce. Ah, the first of the three R’s. If you don’t want to get a catalog that you have no interest in, sign up for Catalog Choice. If it’s another type of unwanted mail other than catalogs, check out www.dmachoice.org, or www.greendimes.org
  • Re-use. Heard about “freecycling”? The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,339 groups with almost 5 million members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Membership is free. Check out www.freecycle.org for more info.
  • Recycle more. Eighty-six percent of Americans have access to curbside or drop-off paper recycling. To find a local recycler, check out www.Earth911.org.
  • Calculate your carbon footprint. There are a number of carbon calculators out there, and ways to cut down. A cool one for kids is at www.meetthegreens.org; for adults - http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/

Most importantly – take some time today to spend a “Green Hour” outside, and really appreciate the wonder and beauty of our planet.

Happy Earth Day From Catalog Choice!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 am and is filed under Catalog Choice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Earth Day, Every Day!”

  1. Happy Earth Day!

    I hadn’t seen that carbon calculator before. It claims my CO2 emissions are 0.5 ton per year (roughly a 93 percent reduction from the national average of 7.5 tons). That sounds great, but alas, the figure includes only home energy and transportation. When I start considering additional factors, like the type of food I eat and the consumer goods I buy (which generate roughly a half pound of carbon per dollar spent), I think my reduction is closer to 60–70 percent compared to national average.

    Eliminating unwanted catalogs is an area where (until recently) I’d been unable to make a significant reduction. And it’s important, since the paper industry is responsible for 9 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted by the U.S. manufacturing sector. Over 3.8 million acres of forest are clearcut every year in North America, just to make paper. When these are replanted with single-species tree farms, irreplaceable habitat is lost for native plants and animals.

    Catalog Choice is helping to make a real difference.

    Tracy Glomski on April 22nd, 2008 at 6:58 am

  2. “In response to Catalog
    Choice, DMA recently dropped the credit card verification and fee
    requirements.” This statement, made today in an e-mail sent by Catalog Choice.org, is unfortunately not accurate — or it wasn’t when I tried to opt-out online at 12:15 p.m. PDT today. DMA still requires a credit card number.

    Debra on April 22nd, 2008 at 12:27 pm

  3. Somethings take time but maybe DMA will abide and join green team.

    Yvonne Camesi on April 22nd, 2008 at 2:15 pm

  4. How to Improve Catalog Choice

    Catalog Choice is a great idea, but not an easy one to use in its current form. For someone who gets too many catalogs (20), I have to click at least 60 times to process choices. Why can’t Catalog Choice allow scrolling of the entire alphabet, all letters and all catalogs, at once, allow the customer to place an X in a box, or move selected catalogs to a list on the right, and then select one reason for all of them (like “don’t want your catalog” or “decline to answer”)? Having to go through the entire data entry process for each catalog, sometimes having to click several times just to display all the catalogs under one letter of the alphabet, is unnecessarily time consuming.
    Catalog Choice has made refusing unnecessary paper easier, now let’s make it faster as well!

    Catherine A Log on May 26th, 2008 at 7:20 am
 

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