» Funniest video ever – junk mail fun RESIDENTIAL SOLAR POWER: Residential Solar Power News

Ok, maybe not the funniest EVER, but pretty darn funny. I love Saturday Night Live and their take on direct mail marketers is hilarious. Sometimes tree huggers need a little comic relief too.

See the video – A Message from the Alliance of Direct Mail Marketers

Laughs aside, this is a funny take on an actual real issue. Junk mail is not as funny when it comes to your door and truly does have an environmental impact. The Center for a New American Dream has some comprehensive facts and figures posted about junk mail, among them.

More than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail accumulates in U.S. mail boxes each year – which is the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. Gulp right?
In 2001 alone, 5.4 million tons of catalogs and other direct mailings ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream.
Only 32% of all bulk mail was recycled in 2001.
The country needs about 290,000 garbage trucks to haul all the unrecycled Junk mail to landfills and incinerators each year. That’s not just materials and energy used that’s also a load of emissions let go just to cart junk mail around. And that’s without factoring in mail trucks.

AND if you don’t give a care about the environment, maybe the costs will get you…

It costs more than $370 million per year to collect and dispose of all the bulk mail that doesn’t get recycled. Consumers and government pay for this.
Sponsors of California’s ‘Return to Sender’ bill estimate that California’s state and local governments spend $500,000 each year just to collect and dispose of AOL disks.

See all the junk mail facts – and when you look, keep in mind these are older stats, as the years go by junk mail actually has gotten worse, which seems funny considering we’re supposed to be the digital age.

HOW TO STOP JUNK MAIL COLD:

Contact companies who send you junk mail. Tell them to take you off their list. If they don’t listen, gather up a nice big bundle and send it back to them – I know sort of passive and not a great use of emissions, but it feels good.
Join Tonic Mailstopper.
Register at Mail Preference Service.
Try the Stop the Junk Mail Kit.
You can also learn how to Cancel Your Random Catalogs.
If you’d like to put the junk mail you already have to work, save it up for holiday wrap.