Stop the Junk Mail Monster!

Most everyone hates junk mail but do you know the extent to which it destroys forests and wastes your time? According to the nonprofit ForestEthics, every year more than 100 billion pieces of junk mail—almost 900 pieces per household—arrive in American mailboxes. Here are some facts from their website:

Junk mail in America accounts for about 30% of all the mail delivered in the world and more than 100 million trees a year are logged to produce it. Almost half of junk mail goes to landfills unopened, yet Americans still spend eight months of their lives dealing with it. The Canadian Boreal Forest and Indonesian tropical forest—both play a vital role in protecting us from the effects of global warming—are being destroyed to supply paper to this wasteful industry.

Did you read that people? Eight months wasted by opening, stacking, tearing up and throwing out junk mail! This has got to end. Do your part to stop junk mail by signing the petition at donotmail.org.

Did you know? Greenhouse gases created each year by junk mail are the annual equivalent of:

-9,372,000 average passenger cars

-11 coal-fired power plants

-Heating 12.9 million homes

-Mowing more than 20 billions lawns

[via ForestEthics]

Greenwashing in A Photo: Keeping The Borders Green, Clearcut the Rest

There are few things I love more than a nice Sunday drive through the forest.

Photo credit: George Steinmetz

Deforestation is Driving Snakes Out of the Jungle and into Rio Di Janeiro

Snakes!

Deforestation!

Deforestation and Snakes!

It sucks to suffer from Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes)and live in Rio De Janeiro right now. The city is being invaded by snakes, driven from their forest home by logging. The AP has it:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Snakes are increasingly invading the eastern Amazon’s largest city, driven from the rain forest by loggers and ranchers who are destroying the reptiles’ natural habitat, the government’s environmental protection agency said Tuesday.

The agency, known as Ibama, has been called out to capture 21 snakes this year in Belem, a sprawling metropolis of 1.5 million people at the mouth of the Amazon River, Ibama press officer Luciana Almeida said by telephone.

Link [International Herald Tribune]

Photo credit: Flickr user Chad Mill