Goings On: Green, green, green

I am all for free enterprise and have to admit that I have been part of the problem by selling into the mail medium. Although promotional paper products are still necessary there are ways we can minimize the use.

Here are some facts I found online that you may be interested in:

• According to a report by the nonprofit group ForestEthics, “mail advertisements create 51.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year — equivalent to the emissions generated by heating about 13 million homes during the winter, or mowing more than 20 billion lawns.”

• According to Simmons Market Research Bureau, currently more than 40 million people nationwide are printing online coupons

• It takes more than 1 1/2 cups of water to make one sheet of paper(IN.gov) -- meaning that the 40 million people who have printed coupons have wasted 3.75 million gallons of water.

• The average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper each year. Most is packaging and junk mail.

• Approximately 1 billion trees worth of paper are thrown away every year in the U.S.

• To produce each week's Sunday newspapers, 500,000 trees must be cut down

So what is the solution?

I don’t know. But what I do know is that too much paper is being wasted. If all of that paper was recycled then that is one thing. However the fact remains that most people do not recycle as much as we should. Yes, I have the blue container and most junk mail goes in there but when I look around Monday mornings and see some of the things hanging out of most black cans (trash cans in my city) I see a lot of “recyclable” materials not in the blue can. The point is that this paper is being wasted.

So how do we stop the production of junk mail? That will be difficult because even if we remove ourselves from mailings, the companies will simply mail to someone else. The only way to stop it is for enough of us to be removed from mailings.

Again, I am all for free enterprise but we are almost to the end of the 1st decade in the 21st century. These companies have to find better ways, retailers and business owners have to understand that doing business as usual and marketing the way our parents did is not necessarily the best way to go.

There are many other companies trying to do what we do but I am making the effort to pass the word and to retailers and consumers to communicate via text on a local level. The technology is here, so why not use it for some good?

I understand the argument: Cell phones and everything related to them are not necessarily good for the environment either…so why switch?

Well, that is very true but let’s face it, cell phones are not going anywhere so let’s replace instead of doing both.

You get the point. Right? I hope you get the point.

So to sum this up:

• Visit the blue can more often

• Remove yourself from mailing lists

• Ask as many people as you know to remove themselves from mailing lists

• If you don’t know how to remove yourself or do not want to bother with it, contact us, and for a small annual fee we will do it for you.

• Use text instead of paper

• Ask businesses you frequent to switch to text marketing

• Text marketing is more effective, convenient and less expensive than traditional mail marketing