Cast your mind back about 5 years or so to around the time the ‘National Do Not Call’ registry was created. Public response was enormous and the results spoke for themselves. I’m not sure about you, but the number of telemarketing calls I received went down dramatically and almost immediately, too. It was a triumph for family mealtimes! Well, what if I told you that a similar initiative is being proposed that would result in the significant reduction of junk mail being delivered to our homes? Imagine opening your mailbox and finding only a few, solitary items (rather than the 23lbs of crap most of us have to put up with here in the US). I, for one, relish the thought!

That’s why I was SO excited when I found out that the great folks over at ForestEthics are championing the ‘National Do Not Mail‘ registry, a comprehensive, accessible, totally free AND enforceable registry - aimed at reducing mailbox-fatigue and the giving the planet some well earned breathing space.

Just to put it all into perspective…Americans receive about 105 billion pieces of junk each year - that’s 848 pieces per household (although I think I get WAY more than that). Dealing with it consumes eight months of our lives and, worst of all, 44% of it ends up in landfill.

Now - I don’t want to alarm the faint of heart - but I think it’s only just of me to include a few factoids on why this is also such a huge, environmentally important thing to do…

Greenhouse gases created, each YEAR, by junk mail are the equivalent of:

• heating 12.9 million homes
• 85,000 international flights in a jumbo jet
• 2.4 million cars, idling for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week….. (just disgusting)
• 4.8 million schools buses which, by the way, is exquisitely put into perspective on the donotmail.org site as thus:

“we can either transport 251,000,000 children to school OR get coupons for porcelain figurines commemorating the musical ‘Cats”

Are we scared yet? Well, we should be… However, all is not lost. We can put a stop to this now. The more signatures the petition gets, the better. The current number is around 65,000 and counting. Please add your voice by signing the petition and opting out of this incredible waste.