Recycling, while not a novel concept, has recently undergone a revolution of sorts in the hearts of Americans.  The idea of going green has never been promoted more in television, movies, and major consumer markets.  You cannot escape the constant reminders that global warming is real, the waste stream is out of control, and resources are limited; yet, even in this “green” minded economy, trees are being wasted thoughtlessly by the Direct Marketing businesses, or what I like to refer to as junk mail.  According to a study published by Oberlin University, each American recycled approximately 360 pounds of paper in 2007, but only 48 percent of “office paper” was recycled that year.  In other words, all that junk mail is still being thrown away.  The EPA estimates that “recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough energy to power the average American home for five months” (http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html).  What would happen if junk mail were stopped entirely?  Would an entire rainforest be saved? 

Junk mail can easily be stopped, and a much more eco friendly resource for coupons and deals is reachable by fingertips: Txtmailer.  Each year “the average household throws away 13,000 separate pieces of paper…most is packaging and junk mail” (http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-facts.html).  What does that translate to?  The “average American uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other products made from trees. This amounts to about 2,000,000,000 trees per year!” (recycling-revolution.com).  A single Sunday paper requires 500,000 trees to die.  If you received those same advertisements you were looking for on your cell phone rather than in the newspaper or the mail box, potentially, you could save 75,000 trees (recycling-revolution.com).  Here is some food for thought: Txtmailer is an online advertising agency that allows YOU the consumer to browse our database, select the types of businesses you would like to hear from, set the number of advertisements you would like to receive, and wait for advertisements and deals to come to your cell phone.  Let’s take a moment to look at this again – a single New York Times equals 75,000 trees, a single text message equals no trees.  The average American uses seven trees a year in paper, but what if you cut out junk mail?  What if the only thing you received in the mail was mail, and all your advertisements came to your cell phone?  And those advertisements were hand-picked by you?  No more advertisements coming in your mail box that you did not ask for.  Direct Marketing is easy to opt out of, which keeps you from having to kill a tree because someone wants to sell you a giant green horseshoe: https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/regist.action