100 Million Green Facts You Didn’t Know About Junk Mail
100 Million Trees Are Cut Each Year to Generate Junk Mail
A report by ForestEthics, the nonprofit environmental organization whose mission is to protect endangered forests, has made a very startling revelation: that there are 100 million green reasons why junk mail are an annoying intrusion.
Not that the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive each year are irksome enough or that the emissions of junk mail are equal to those of over nine million cars or 51 million tons of greenhouse gases.
The group estimates that every year, more than 100 million trees are cut down to make junk mail - the equivalent of clear-cutting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every 4 months!
According to the report (PDF), those trees come from endangered forests like Canada’s Boreal, the forests of the Southeastern United States, Indonesia and northern Europe, as well as smaller areas of rare or disappearing forest ecosystems in the Western United States, Brazil, Chile, and Russia.
In the Boreal alone, the equivalent of over 220,000 acres of forest are destroyed every year to make junk mail in the United States. ForestEthics statistics show that US junk mail makes up almost 10% of all the timber harvested in the Canadian Boreal, by volume as well as by
harvest area.
The report which attempts to assess junk mail effects on global warming features a myth and fact section that debunks alleged misinformation spread in the wake of ForestEthics’ Do Not Mail campaign.
Jim Ford, the report’s author, said: “Junk mail has implications for climate change that start in the forest, continue through paper production, printing and distribution, and end with recycling or landfilling.”
Image credit: Tanya Ryno at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Awesome! I signed the petition at donotmail.org
Another thing I learned awhile back about junk mail is that without it, the USPS would go out of business. They can’t sustain their business model without bulk mailing. That’s not a justification by any means, just an interesting quandary. If the USPS went away, would we then have to use services like UPS to send our regular mail?
Wow, that is a LOT of wasted trees every year! Sad!
http://useurl.us/126
Where do they get the figure of 100 million trees cut each year for junk mail? I don’t see it footnoted or explained in their pdf. I know that alot of the emissions happen during the processing of the trees into junk mail and then delivery. I seems to me that the entire argument is undercut if the 100 million figure isn’t explained.
Wow, yet another reason to hate junk mail (like we needed one). I can’t imagine the fuel (for shipping) and electricity (for production) that could also be saved if this garbage was cut out of our daily lives.
My pet peeve is the lack of choice on receiving phone books. THREE deliveries this year & of course when I call to complain they ignore me as I try to explain that I did NOT ask to opt in.
Well, all I can do is hope Obama / Biden will halt cooperate abuses like this while insuring descent affordable, net neutral digital access for all, so I can enjoy the 21 st century pleasures like goog411…
Bill
Mead Wa USA Earth
well since paper in the U.S. is made from tree farms that just means 100 million or so trees are planted and another 100 million are cut down each year.
I am missing something? This article doesn’t explain how spam translates into trees being cut down! Emissions yes I get it but trees? What is everyone printing their spam email?
Please explain…
Doh! My wife just explained Junk ‘Snail’ Mail. Wow that’s bad!
[...] 100 Million Trees Are Cut Each Year to Generate Junk Mail. A report by ForestEthics, the nonprofit environmental organization whose mission is to protect endangered forests, has made a very startling revelation: that there are 100 million green reasons why junk mail are an annoying intrusion.http://ecoworldly.com/2008/08/22/100-million-green-facts-you-didnt-know-about-junk-mail/ [...]