Speak for the Trees: No More Junk Mail

The excitement of retrieving the mail is unsurmountable. It parallels that of a dog waiting for dinner. But, often this unsurmounted excitement is burdened by the inescapable doom of junk mail.

Not only does this junk mail provide disappointment for the anxious awaiter-of-fun-mail, it unnecessarily kills trees. Recycling junk mail, although helpful, is not cutting the carbon footprint . The journey of junk mail from the sender to the disappointed receiver results in plane, semi-truck, and car emissions being expelled into the atmosphere. Also, the chopping down of the trees to make the paper, to make the junk mail, has obvious environmental impacts.

As Dr. Seuss's The Lorax once said, "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues." And with the program Green Dimes, you actually can speak for the trees. Sign-up for Green Dimes and they will track down the junk mail senders and have you taken off their 'sender lists.'

Of course there are monetary costs associated with this program. The idea of never again receiving junk mail with no strings attached would surely be too good to be true. But, one of the strings that is attached to this program is the planting of trees. When you enroll in the program you will not only be taken off dozens of mailing lists, the organization will plant five trees.

A counter on the sidebar of the website shows that about one million trees have been planted to date and almost 4 million pounds of junk mail have been stopped.

While the 20 bucks seems pricey, maybe it's worth the end of the annoyance of junk mail and then end of paper waste.