Stop being Junk-Mailed?

Ever get tired of junk mails filling up your mailboxes?
Catalogs from shops and showrooms that you have never been to? Credit Card offers from banks you did not even know existed? And how about those pesky ad-brochures?

Well, now with a little bit of positive action you can do away with the junk mails. Some of the options available may even offer up real money for you to stop junk mail.

Other than just a nuisance, there are several benefits of reducing and stopping the junk mails completely. Its better for environment as it will eventually cut-down the paper consumption - saving millons of trees every year.

The book 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth listed stopping unwanted junk mail as its number 2 recommendation. Some interesting junk mail statistics from the book include:

• Each year, 100 million trees are used to produce junk mail;

• 250,000 homes could be heated with one day's supply of junk mail; and

• Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year.

Furthermore, reducing junk mail also means - less chances of identity thefts resulting from unsolicited credit card offers.

Direct mail organizations have a variety of ways of acquiring your name and personal information. They usually purchase lists of names from credit bureaus, credit card companies, banks, magazine subscription lists, warranty information cards and many other commercial services. For more information about change of address information provided by the US Postal Service please see http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/04/20/postal_spam/index.html

How Can I Stop Junk Mail?

One of the most effective things you can do is to write letters to mail preference services and credit bureaus requesting that your name and address be removed from their lists. The names and addresses of the largest name-selling companies are listed on the back side of this fact sheet. Contact all your credit card companies and ask them not to release your name, address, or phone number to anyone for marketing, mailing, or promotional purposes.

Other companies to contact include: your credit union and mortgage company, all magazines you subscribe to, groups of which you are a member, airline frequent flyer programs, hotel programs, cable companies, and more. Anyone who sends you a bill may sell your name. Many of the charities we support can earn as much money selling names and addresses as through donations. Every time you order something over the phone, internet, or through the mail, your name may be sold. To keep this from happening, call or write these organizations and request a privacy designation on your name, address and phone number. Tell them that under no circumstances is your personal information to be sold.

You can opt out of unwanted credit card offers by opting out of the pre-screened credit card offers.
Just visit -- www.optoutprescreen.com


Green Dimes (www.greendimes.com) is another company that offers services (basic free and paid premium level) to stop junk mails. It even offers $1 to anyone who signs up to reduce junk mail even for the free service.

A free junk mail mitigation kit is available through: StopJunkMail.Org

Other Sources for managing Junk Mail:
ProQuo.com
CatalogChoice.org
New American Dream
41pounds.org
JunkMailFixit
Private Citizen
Tidy Mailbox

For further information
Direct Marketing Association
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

ANTARCTICA - THE MELTING POT!

Is history unfolding right in front of our eyes?

Yes, we are here and we would be here. Things we had learned through the school years, global warming and melting of polar ice is becoming reality.

Antarctica's massive Wilkins Ice Shelf has begun disintegrating under the effects of global warming. Just a few weeks ago, a massive ice shelf broke off in the Antarctica. The collapse of a substantial section of the shelf was triggered at the end of February when an iceberg measuring 41 by 2.4 kilometers broke off its southwestern front.

(Images courtesy NSIDC, NASA, University of Colorado)

Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started February 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years.

The rest of the Wilkins ice shelf, which is about the size of Connecticut, is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice. Scientists worry that it too may collapse. Larger, more dramatic ice collapses occurred in 2002 and 1995.

Melting of polar caps will lead to rise of oceans, submergence of low lying coastal areas and causing masses to relocate. Excessive heat trapped in the earth's 'green house' would increase the relative humidity of the earth and thus result in significant climatic extremes.

Are we prepared to see such catastrophic consequences and would we able to survive?

Action is needed right now, if it is not already too late. Let's do our part to leave behind a habitable earth for the generation to come.

Source and Further Information: http://nsidc.org/news/press/20080325_Wilkins.html
http://staffwww.fullcoll.edu/tmorris/an_inconvenient_truth/an_inconvenient_truth.htm

So, what's your Greendex?

With Green Revolution on the way.....so, the question I would like to ask is what's your Greendex?

Greendex is a latest term coined by National Geographic equivalent to finding out the environmental impact of one's life style. However, their research went beyond just stereotypical carbon-foot print rating for a country, it rank individuals and looked at each country as a whole.

As NG put it, "Unlike other measures that rank countries according to the environmental performance of their governments, companies and other factors, the Greendex is the first to rank the performance of individual consumers, rather than countries as a whole."

The results were quiet surprising but at the same time easy to digest.



Among the countries ranked for Greendex, India and Brazil topped the charts...

Here's what i think --
With significant population crammed in relatively smaller area (high population density), booming economies and thus fight for resources has turned at least the individual citizens some of these developing countries, more environmentally conscious than conventional wisdom might suggest.

It would seem - if one is competing with billion odd people for the limited number of opportunities - everyday would be a quest of survival by using the minimal possible resources and maximizing the utilization and gains....

I am running at 55 Greendex right now and looking to 'green-it-up' a bit more with a road-bike soon. What's your Greendex? Find out for your self by using the Greendex Calculator.

A few excerpts from the NG article --

"Consumers surveyed in Brazil earned higher Greendex scores than all others for housing. This is driven by small residence size as measured by number of rooms per household (96% have four rooms or fewer in their homes), by far the least use of home heating (found in only 9% of homes, a need negated mostly by climate), relatively widespread use of on-demand water heaters (rather than tank heaters), and wide penetration of renewable electricity (generated from biofuels/biomass in this case). Brazilian consumers overwhelmingly wash laundry in cold water, and they are far above average on minimizing their use of fresh water, both of which contribute to their stronger performance.

Their transportation habits earn Brazilian consumers second place on this sub-index. They are much more likely than most others to walk, bike, take public transportation, own a fuel-efficient vehicle and drive compact cars.

On the other side of the globe, Indian consumers tied with those in Brazil for the top rank on this 14-country index, in part because of their relatively lower environmental impact from housing and above-average performance on transportation and food.

Indian (and Chinese) consumers are more likely than other respondents to say they have installed solar panels at their residence to heat water (12%); six in 10 (58%) use an on-demand electrical water heater, by far the highest among consumers surveyed.

In terms of transportation, Indian consumers also ranked near the top. A third (33%) —- the second highest on this survey — say they live close to the places they need to go most days in order to reduce their impact on the environment. They are by far the most likely to own motorcycles or scooters instead of a car, and among the most likely to take public transportation (35% daily) and to drive a compact car rather than a larger vehicle. As a reflection of rapid economic growth and increasing transportation needs in India, consumers in this country are among the most likely to say that last year they used public transportation and bicycles more often than in the year prior, but were also more likely to have increased their frequency of driving alone and flying.

On the food sub-index, Indian consumers outperformed those in the other countries surveyed by a considerable margin, driven primarily by their avoidance of meats: 72% never eat beef and 76% never eat pork. In addition, 84% ate locally grown food at least weekly, among the highest recorded in the survey.

On goods, Indian consumers do better than most, with widespread preference for green products and ownership of relatively few appliances and electronic devices. Four in 10 prefer to repair things rather than replace them, the highest (on par with Hungarians) in the survey. However, only 17% always recycle, the lowest (also on par with Hungarian consumers), likely due to high levels of reuse.

Attitudinally, many Indian consumers — higher than the 14-country average —- are very concerned about environmental problems (42% strongly agree), feel these problems negatively impact their health (35%), feel guilty about their own environmental impact (22%), and say they are currently working very hard to reduce that impact (27%). Three of these last four statements were found to be drivers of Greendex scores, meaning the more likely consumers are to agree with these statements, the more likely they are to be behaving in a more environmentally sustainable way."