Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

Paper Diet Targets Unwanted Advertising Mail

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Catalog Choice and Environmental Paper Network join the national campaign to help Americans save 1 million pounds of paper by April 22

NEW YORK — Jan. 17, 2012 — Manilla, a free service that offers the best way for consumers to manage their bills and accounts online and via mobile applications, has added unwanted advertising mail to its list of restrictions for the 2012 Paper Diet, a campaign to help consumers and businesses reduce their use of paper. Catalog Choice, the leading service to stop unwanted mail, and the Environmental Paper Network, the leading voice in the environmentally responsible use of paper, have joined the effort. Manilla has set goal for Americans to “lose” more than 1 million pounds and 5 million inches of paper, while saving 13,000 trees.

“We are thrilled to work with the Environmental Paper Network and Catalog Choice to support Americans as they go on the 2012 Paper Diet,” said Jessica Insalaco, the chief marketing officer of Manilla.

In order to achieve their paper weight loss goals, consumers and businesses can take the 2012 Paper Diet Pledge by posting a digital badge on Facebook and by suppressing unwanted paper mail. By simply opting out of getting unwanted catalogs and other advertising mail, Americans can lose half of their paper weight. They can lose the other half by electing to go paperless with direct mail, bills and account statements.

Because account information is available online through Manilla — which provides expedited digital mail delivery — it has never been easier to lose paper weight. With Manilla, users have all of their important account information in one place online, giving paper dieters a free, secure digital alternative to receiving paper mail.

To make the paper weight loss as easy as possible, consumers can use a variety of resources that are committed to the Paper Diet, such as Catalog Choice, the nation’s most comprehensive service that helps people suppress unwanted catalogs, direct mail and phonebooks. “CatalogChoice.org is an easy way to shed pounds of unwanted paper,” said Chuck Teller, the company’s executive director. “More than 1.5 million Americans use our service to opt out of unwanted mail. Everyone wins — cut clutter at home, reduce costs for companies, and save natural resources. Dieting has never been so easy.”

Using services like Manilla and Catalog Choice will not only make consumers’ lives easier, but it will also help the environment, an effort that the Environmental Paper Network is proud to support.

“The Environmental Paper Network has a common vision to improve paper-use efficiency and eliminate excessive and unnecessary paper consumption. Our online Paper Calculator is the perfect scale for the paper diet,” said Joshua Martin, executive director of EPN. “Eliminating 1 million pounds of virgin paper will save 13,000 trees, the energy to power 180 homes per year, the greenhouse gas emissions equal to 273 cars per year and the solid waste of 34 garbage trucks.”

The dieter who loses the most paper weight will receive a Paperless Toolbox, which will include an iPad, an iPad pen, a Kindle, Paperless Post stamps and a shredder. For more information on the Paper Diet and how you can take the pledge, please visit ThePaperDiet.com.

Visualizing The Forest: How Many Trees Are Being Faxed?

Monday, October 31st, 2011

In the interest of saving paper, we wanted to share with you this infographic we came across on the  MetroFax blog. We hope you’ll pass it along and spread the word on the harmful effects of wasting paper.

There usually aren’t forests surrounding office buildings, so it’s hard to imagine how wasting paper can harm the environment. This infographic will help you visualize the consequences of corporate faxing and other paper use. Through faxing alone, each U.S. company uses 4 trees per year — and that’s one company. Find out how using less paper and taking advantage of recycled paper can make a huge positive influence on our natural resources.

How Many Trees Have Been Faxed?
Source:MetroFax – Online Faxing

 

 

 

 

 

Seattle City Council votes to reduce phone book waste

Monday, October 11th, 2010

What started as a resolution to request the State of Washington to require a do not mail registry had turned into the nation’s first law that requires an opt-out service for advertising material.  In the name of consumer choice and zero waste, the City of Seattle has passed Council Bill Number 116954:

AN ORDINANCE relating to solid waste reduction; establishing license requirements for publishers of yellow pages phone books; establishing an opt-out registry and a recovery fee for yellow pages phone books, and amending the Seattle Municipal Code by creating a new Chapter 6.255.

The following press release was published by the City shortly after the vote.

SeattleResidents and businesses tired of getting two or three – or more – unwanted yellow pages phone books will soon have an efficient, effective way to stop those deliveries following today’s 8-1 City Council vote.

The new Seattle ordinance also requires yellow pages publishers to begin paying for recycling of unwanted and outdated yellow pages directories beginning next year.

The new law creates an Opt-Out Registry that Seattle residents and businesses can access on the web, by phone or by mail and requires yellow pages publishers to pay the costs of operating the registry, for which the City expects to hire a contractor. The legislation also sets out penalties for yellow pages publishers who continue to deliver books when requested not to.

“Seattleites are constantly looking for ways to reduce their impact on the environment, and the Council has heard from an overwhelming number of people who don’t want phone books,” said Councilmember Mike O’Brien, who chairs the committee and is the prime sponsor of the legislation. “Creating a one-stop shop managed by a third party will help reduce clutter, increase residential security, and, save Seattle Public Utilities customers, the people of Seattle, money. This is a win-win for Seattle.”

Based on information supplied by some of the yellow pages publishers, Seattle Public Utilities estimates nearly 2 million yellow pages phone books are dropped off in Seattle every year, costing approximately $350,000 to recycle.

Through the ordinance passed today, the Council established a fee of $0.14 per book, likely declining to $0.07 per book after five years, to pay for the registry. Based on the principle of product stewardship where producers are responsible for recycling their products at end-of life, the legislation also imposed a cost recovery fee on yellow pages publishers, requiring them to reimburse the city for the cost of collecting and recycling discarded phone books, currently $148 per ton.

“This ordinance has national significance as the first phone book opt-out requirement in the country,” said Scott Cassel, Executive Director of the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI). “PSI is using Seattle’s legislation, along with other legislative examples from around the country, to create a model bill for states and municipalities that are ready to follow Seattle’s lead.”

“We will use technology and common sense to give the public the ability to pick and choose which yellow page publications they want to receive and those they do not, all in one spot.  This will not only make opting-out easier, it will also reduce our recycling costs,” said Councilmember Bruce Harrell.

“Combined with the expansion of organic waste services to multi-family housing, our work to reduce unwanted junk mail volumes and implementation of the foam ban earlier this year, the Zero Waste Strategy is decreasing our carbon footprint and keeping Seattle on track to reach the City’s recycling goal of 60 percent,” said Council President Richard Conlin.

“This new law will reduce the number of unwanted phone books left on people’s door steps and small non-profit organizations will be able to continue to distribute guides and directories to their membership or others who wish to receive them,” said Councilmember Tom Rasmussen.

The registry is expected to be ready for use no later than July 1, 2011 and publishers will begin reimbursing the City’s Solid Waste Fund for all 2011 deliveries.

10.10.10 – What are you doing to help the planet?

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

10.10.10 is Sunday.  What are you going to do to help the planet?  Using Catalog Choice is one of the easiest and most effective solutions.  Slam our servers!  Stop the waste.  Check out our action page on 350.org.

The Truth About Shredded Paper

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Did you know that shredded paper is not good for recycling.  Here are three important facts about shredded paper according to Eco-Cyle:

  1. When you shred paper, what you’re actually doing is cutting the lengths of the individual paper fibers, thus cutting the future recycling potential of that fiber. The length of a paper fiber determines its value since a longer fiber can be used to make a higher-grade paper and can be recycled more times.
  2. At the recycling facility, mixed paper from households and businesses goes over an automated screen that makes the paper product cleaner by shaking out non-fiber contaminants like bits of glass, etc. The only problem is that the shredded paper gets grabbed by the fingers on the screens and gets pulled into the reject bin, and off to the landfill.
  3. The paper mills that buy recycled paper must do a quality sort on the material before they put it into their multi-million dollar machines, and it’s just plain impossible to do a good quality sort of shredded paper. Many contaminants can hide in the shred, such as plastic strips from a document cover that were accidentally shredded along with the paper. For this reason, paper markets don’t like to buy shredded paper and don’t like to see it in with the higher-grade junk mail and office paper.

The best way to green your privacy efforts is to opt-out of unsolicited mail and go paperless with your personal business documents. For the stuff that is left, if you shred it – bag it. *Update* – several comments have come in about composting your shredded paper.  According to the Sierra Club’s Mr. Green – “Except for colored and glossy paper, which might contain some toxic heavy metals, newsprint and other paper is safe to use as mulch or in compost. In fact, one study revealed that paper had less toxic material than straw or grass!”

Talkin' Trash – Data from the EPA

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Helping America keep a New Year’s Resolution

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

We resolve to put our mailbox on a diet.

Whenever you receive an unwanted catalog, rip off the back cover, recycle the rest and set the back cover next to your computer.  Next time you go online or at least once a week, login to your Catalog Choice account and enter your opt-out request.  It takes less then 30 seconds from start to finish.

If we all resolve to spend at least one minute setting our mail preferences every week, we will eliminate hundreds of pounds of unwanted mail.  Be part of the solution.

Why Tree Farms are not a solution

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

When talking to the DMA and other advocates for direct mail, it is often argued that any impact caused by the harvesting of trees for advertising mail is offset by the fact new trees are planted and some of the paper comes from tree farms.  I was always troubled by this argument but did not have a solid response, until now.

Bernd Heinrich, emeritus professor at the University of Vermont, wrote an excellent op-ed in the December 20th New York Times titled Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees.

Heinrich notes:

Part of the problem is the public misunderstanding of how forests and carbon relate. Trees are often called a “carbon sink” — implying that they will sop up carbon from the atmosphere for all eternity. This is not true: the carbon they take up when they are alive is released after they die, whether from natural causes or by the hand of man. The only true solution to achieving global “carbon balance” is to leave the fossil carbon where it is — underground.

Beyond that, planting more trees is decidedly not the same thing as saving our forests. Instead, planting trees invariably means using them as a sustainable crop, which leads not only to a continuous cycle of carbon releases, but also to the increased destruction of our natural environment.

The solution is to reduce the volume of natural resource consumption.  Catalog Choice is dedicated to providing a service that allows us, as a society, to reduce the volume of unwanted mail.

Garbage collector gets the value of waste reduction

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

CleanScapes, a garbage-collection company in the Seattle area, is challenging five Seattle neighborhoods to reduce the amount of things stuffed into garbage, recycling and yard-waste bins. The winning neighborhood gets $50,000 for a project of its choosing.

According to this article in the Seattle Times:

“Rather than governments passing a law, we want to see what happens with a carrot,” said Chris Martin, president of CleanScapes, which took over the garbage collection in certain Seattle neighborhoods last March.

Ray Hoffman, head of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), said that every week Seattle loads 5,100 tons of garbage onto a mile-long double-stacked train heading to a dump in Oregon 300 miles away. Recycling is taken to Allied Waste in SoDo; yard waste is trucked to Cedar Grove in Maple Valley and Marysville.

The most significant thing people can do to shrink their garbage footprint is to buy a mulching lawn mower so residents don’t fill up their yard-waste containers with grass clippings, Martin said. Another huge step would be canceling junk mail, which fills recycling bins, he said.

How Green is Your Country?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

All the climate change chatter in Copenhagen has us wondering, how green is America, anyway?  Can we make a meaningful commitment to truly address the daunting issue of global warming?  Can we be a world leader?  As Americans, we tend to pride ourselves on our eco-friendly lifestyles, but when it comes to the task of planet-saving, there are many countries that rank higher than the United States.  We found this interesting blog on Green Diva Mom that lists the world’s most eco-friendly countries, based on several different surveys.  Many European and South American countries score as some of the world’s greenest.

Take Recycled Rates for example.  The Unites States does a pretty good job at 31.5% of waste recycled, but there is plenty of room for improvement.  We are outranked by six countries:

  • Switzerland, 52%
  • Austria, 49.7%
  • Germany, 48%
  • Netherlands, 46%
  • Norway, 40%
  • Sweden, 34%
  • United States, 31.5%

Take a look at the post to view some other interesting statistics and see how the United States compares to our fellow global citizens.