Cutting the paper trail of junk mail

Emailers like to spit about spam, so Congress passed laws to fight the impossible torrent of virtual junk mail and protect "legitimate" direct marketing. But no laws serve to slim the more than 4 million tons of direct mail envelopes, postcards, and catalogs and political tracts sent each year (direct mail pseudoscience wields so much influence that its grand poobah, Karl Rove, is "Bush's brain")—which arguably cause more of a personal nuisance and obviously harm the ecosystem more than spam.

People relish full-color, glossy catalogs and magazines, which Forest Ethics' Victoria's Dirty Secret campaign this winter tried to make unsexy. How does one lingerie peddler get the cojones to waste trees on a million unrecycled catalogs a day? Playboy's circulation is triple less than that, but at least it has articles. Still, smart companies can groom their brand and save money by greening their catalogs, as GreenBiz suggests:

If the entire catalog industry made the simple step of shifting to just 10% recycled content, the annual environmental benefits would be enormous, saving enough wood to build a six-foot fence stretching seven times across the United States.

Jeff of Sustainablog wonders "if paper catalogs aren't outdated to some degree, since the same thing can be done on the Web." Luckily for magazines, that industry's Folio prize just introduced the Aveda Environmental Award. Winners use post-consumer recycled paper, soy inks, and no chlorine; they include (no surprise) Plenty and Natural Health. Joel Makower applauds but notes, "The acid test will be if Aveda can infect the mothership -- that is, get its parent company, Estee Lauder, to adopt a similar policy for its myriad consumer brands."

Comments

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[davian]

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[Arthur mcbeth]

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[Ralph emerson]

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[David law]

Processing paper from virgin timber also requires large amounts of energy—in 2000, the pulp and paper industry contributed an estimated 9 percent of total manufacturing carbon emissions in the U.S.
http://www.vividads.com.au/

[charmspray@gmail.com]

According to the Pulp and Paper Products Council, the total amount of paper consumed in Canada in 2004 was 4,586,000 tonnes. StatsCan clocked Canada’s population in 2004 at 31,974,363.

[paper shredder]

So the next time you are out buying paper, take the time to look for a ream with a high percentage of post-consumer recycled content.

[elsa]

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[green LA girl]

I've been trying to wage my own war against junk mail -- Would link you, but I'm not allowed --

It'll still be a few more weeks before I can tell whether or not this war's working, however --