[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkbsEoPDjCw&feature=share&list=UUZm-e0TGAWtNSV-S8UjO80g]

I did a bunch of Spring cleaning this weekend and what I noticed was Mensa and I receive tons of catalogs and junk mail. A large portion of what I recycled this weekend and every week is spam snail mail and personally I am tired of it.

Once again I am taking my personal life drama and using it in our blog. Let’s trash this junk! First place I started this morning with was Catalog Choice, which is free and took less than a minute to sign up and remove my first catalog.

The second option I went with was www.dmachoice.org, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) website.  They help you manage the catalogs you receive, mail from magazine publishers, such as subscription offers, newsletters, periodicals and other promotional mailings, various mailings, such as donation requests, retail promotions, cable and phone offers, bank offers and mail addressed to “Current Resident” and last but not least to manage pre-screened credit offers. All the things I dread seeing in the mail, which then ends up in the recycle bin.

The DMA Choice website is nice as they give you the contact information you need all in one place to stop this waste.

Check out both sites and stop the madness!!! I liked to end this entry with some dramatic stats that I found here below.

Shocking Junk Mail Statistics & Environmental Damage

1. Junk Mail Kills 2.6 Million Trees Every Year.  I assumed each piece of “standard mail” was junk mail (this is only about 50% of the total volume of US Mail) and assumed that junk mail uses 2 sheets of paper (1 envelope and 1 letter), found the number of sheets of paper per tree, and did some math.  Of course some junk mail is only a postcard, but some is a catalog.  And some does use recycled paper.  But I did not factor in any of the damage caused by all those trucks burning gas to deliver all the mail either.
2. Every US Household Gets 6 Pieces of Junk Mail Each Day.  I took the total volume of junk mail and divided by the number of households and the number of mail delivery days and got the answer, which is 6.3.
3. In 5 Days We Produce Enough Junk Mail to Reach the Moon.  I took the width of a business envelope (8-7/8 inches) and multiplied by the number of junk mail pieces and divided by the number of inches to the moon, and saw that we could reach the moon 61 times per year with our junk mail.  If you divide the number of mail delivery days by 61, you get 5, which means every 5 days we could reach the moon again with our junk mail.
4. Junk Mail Produces 1 Billion Pounds of Landfill Each Year.  If you take the 2.6 million trees killed each year and convert that into pounds of paper, you get roughly 2 billion pounds.  Even if you assume half of that is recycled (I saw an estimate of 45% on Wikipedia) you still have 1 billion pounds of paper going into landfills
5. Junk Mail Weighs Almost Double the US Military’s Tanks.  Our junk mail weighs nearly twice as much as all the US tanks in the world, combined.  If you take the average US tank at a weight of 67 tons (a ton is 2,000 pounds) and divide the total weight of paper from junk mail by that number, you find that junk mail produced each year weighs the same as over 15,000 tanks.  According to Wikipedia, the US military has about 8,000 tanks.  By the way, a tank weighs about 40 times more than a standard car.

Okay, so we here at Mushpa y Mensa make the commitment to be on top of every piece of junk mail we get. I also promise to out the corporations that will not let us opt out. I said it!!!

-Mushpa