Will Craven, Media Officer for Forest Ethics, joined us by phone Wensday.
Support a Do Not Mail Registry
"Just as the Do Not Call Registry freed Americans from telemarketers, a Do Not Mail Registry would give us the choice to stop junk mailers from violating our privacy, wasting our time and damaging the environment."
Sign the petition!!!!!!!!!Send it to another friend!!
Halloween is a social time, use it to our advantage. Let's turn halloween green.
"Founded in 1994, Forest Ethics is a nonprofit environmental organization with staff in Canada, the United States and Chile. Our mission is to protect Endangered Forests and wild places, wildlife, and human wellbeing – one of our focus areas is climate change, which compromises all of our efforts if left unchecked. We catalyze environmental leadership among industry, governments and communities by running hard-hitting and highly effective campaigns that leverage public dialogue and pressure to achieve our goals. Our current campaigns focus on wild places in Canada, Chile and in California’s Sierra, and on industries that use products that come from these places. Our efforts have transformed the environmental practices of Fortune 500 companies including Dell, Staples, Office Depot, Victoria’s Secret, Williams-Sonoma, and many others. In 2008, we launched two major new initiatives – Do Not Mail, which calls for a national registry to stop junk mail"
Do not mail.org registery
20% of global heating is associated with deforestation.
Forest Ethics is also fighting for the Boreal Forest in Canada,
400 ton trucks???
Some interesting links;
forestethics
tarsandswatch
greenpeace
guardian
You can E-mail Will anytime (Will@forestethics.org)
NOW THE BAD NEWS
Thursday thru Saturday
"Weather permitting, the Army will conduct a prescribed burn this week on nearly 140 acres at Fort Ord."
Call Sam Farr in protest (831-424-2229)
If you have ash for analasis call for help (831-521-6042 or 831-899-5716)
Be aware of the wind direction.
There has never been a Enviromental Impact Study done on this health risk!
Jeff
3 comments:
I wanted to share this with you. While I'm concerned with environmental impact of bulk mail, I'm also concerned about what will happen if it suddenly stops. There will be consequences to deal with if both sides of this problem are not considered. Common ground should be found for the best results with the least resistance.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 8, 2007
CONTACT: Drew Von Bergen
(202) 662-2489
(703) 623-9207
vonbergen@nalc.org
Letter Carriers Union Opposes ‘Do Not Mail’ Bill
As Harmful to Postal Service and American Public
WASHINGTON – The national president of the National Association of Letter Carriers union told key Washington state legislators today that passage of bills to create a “Do Not Mail” registry would be detrimental to the Postal Service, its workforce, and the general public.
NALC President William H. Young, whose union represents 221,000 active city letter carriers in the nation, expressed his “fierce opposition” to the legislation in letters to Washington House Commerce and Labor Chairman Steve Conway and Senate Consumer Protection and Housing Chairman Brian Weinstein as Conway’s committee held a hearing today on the legislative proposal. About 5,500 letter carriers reside in Washington state.
Young said the proposal “could jeopardize the very future of America’s postal system” adding that while it may be well-intentioned, it is being erroneously promoted as similar to “Do Not Call” limits on telemarketers.
“Unlike the annoying phone calls that were routinely timed to coincide with the dinner hour, postal patrons are free to choose when and how to deal with the mail they receive,” Young said.
“Elimination of a significant portion of advertising mail could be devastating,” he said. “This ‘third class’ mail now constitutes more than 50 percent of all mail, and its loss could mean reductions in current levels of service or, even worse, the collapse of all postal services. In sum, it would be detrimental to the Postal Service, its workforce and to citizens themselves to limit the mail delivered to postal patrons.”
Young said letter carriers, as other citizens, have environmental concerns about the waste of natural resources, but added that most advertising mailing is printed on recycled paper and postal patrons can recycle that mail.
The argument that we don't want to reduce junk mail because doing so would have a negative impact on the postal service is in the same vein as the argument that we should have more wars else soldiers would become unemployed.
Seriously, if someone's job is to shlep around and deliver stuff, 90% of which is thrown out - what kind of job is that? Wouldn't it be better to have less junk mail, help the environment and give postal carriers greater job satisfaction from knowing that they are preforming a valuable service?
Though junk mail may consist of mostly recycled paper, what about the energy required to recycle and transport the mail? This is not insignificant.
Timothy and Mike.
Thank you both for your comments. This is not unlike the arguments about closing down the coal industry because of the amount of co2 they produce. What about the miners?
One of Gores ideas is to provide financial incentives for the miners to go and learn a new skill while transitioning away from that work.
It's the same with the postal workers. I'm sure they'd be happy to do another job! Can we support them through the transition? Is that the governments job?
Is anyone supporting me while I try to go for a "green" career?
No... but the point being that jobs are important and we'd have alot more success and support for dropping junk mail if we could support the postal workers too.
Deb
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