Green Facts You Didn’t Know About Junk Mail

Global Warming Endangered Forests Emissions of junk mail are equal to those of over nine million cars or 51 million tons of greenhouse gases.

by ecoworldly.com

Published: Sat, August 23, 2008 - 12:17 pm CST Last Updated: Sat, August 23, 2008 - 12:19 pm CST

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.”

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