Friday, August 27, 2010

Say no to flyers and newspapers to save trees, reduce clutter and save money.

The experiment is a success.

Each year, our household saves 2.1 mature trees per year by refusing flyers and newspapers.

At our house, we have more time, less mess, less stress, the paperboy gets his route done faster and we save trees from being unnecessarily, cut down, transported, processed, printed and delivered to our door.



I learned that;
  • the average North American household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.
  • 18.7 mature trees are required to produce 1 tonne of newsprint.
  • The 18.7 trees saved (above) can absorb a total of 125 kg  of carbon dioxide from the air each year. 
  • (so our 2.1 save 14 kg the first year, 28, 42, 56 etc...)
  • Newspapers alone can take up as much as 13 percent of the space in US landfills.
  • In the US (pop 307 Million), If all newspaper was recycled, the US would save about 250 Million trees each year!
  • So .8 trees per person.  In Canada, with 2.6 persons per household, that is using up 2.1 trees per year per household, simply by accepting newspapers and flyers.
  • World demand of newsprint in 2006 totaled about 37.2 million metric tonnes
  • Canada is the largest producer of newsprint with 7.8 million tonnes produced

sources: http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-facts.html EPA and various others...

Now that speaks of the trees required, this does not factor in the transportation of the raw materials, the processing of those trees into pulp and paper, the transportation and storage of that paper, the cost of ink and printing the financing costs on loans for all of these operations.

Add to that the personal cost of being persuaded to purchase services that you hadn't previously decided to purchase, that very direct economic cost is what keeps advertisers motivated to "spam" you with flyers and newspapers. It DOES work, and because it works you might want to consider (like we did) freeing yourself from that kind of constant intentional persuasion.

I would expect that the "tree cost" of newspapers and flyers is likely only a part of  the story.

When you say yes to flyers, you say yes to a LOT of waste that has a very real impact on our environment.

Want a nice simple sign for your mailbox to scare away the flyers?  here; http://www.iwilltry.org/w/index.php?title=Flyers_against_flyers_campaign

Cheers,
Greg.

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