Sunny Disposition (that's Sunny D)

Forget that purple stuff--I'm here with some Sunny D for ya!

Hey y'all, I'm back! Wait a minute! Look at how presumptuous I am! I'm typing "Hey Y'ALL" as if to assume that I have a readership of more than one. If you're (I'm using "you're" in the plural, singular, or hypothetical sense) continuing to check out my blog, then thank you for enduring my idle chatter.

I'm happy to report that it's sunny, warm, and breezy again in Sandy Eggo, so I'm no longer a "wet blanket".

Before I get all happy on your collective (or solitary) asses, I wanted to take a minute to focus on another problem...junk mail. Check out these apples:

Weight of paper in U.S. municipal solid waste in 1980: 55 million tons
Weight of paper in U.S. municipal solid waste in 1999: 87.5 million tons
Number of trees it takes to make a ton of paper: 24
Weight of catalogs and other direct mailings in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream in 1999: 5.6 million tons
Rate at which bulk mail was recycled in 1999: 22%
Number of garbage trucks it would take to haul away all the unrecycled Junk mail in the U.S. to landfills and incinerators each year: 340,000
Typical weight of 4 elephants: 17.8 tons
Amount of bulk mail delivered annually by each of the U.S. Postal Service's 293,000 letter carriers: 17.8 tons
Amount of time the average American spends opening bulk mail over the course of his or her life: 8 months
Percentage of bulk mail that is thrown away unopened: 44%
Money spent by U.S. companies on direct mail in 1993: $27.3 billion
Money spent by U.S. companies on direct mail in 1998: $39.3 billion
Tax dollars spent to dispose of Junk mail: $320 million
Pieces of bulk mail sent by U.S. non-profits in one year: 12 billion
Amount donated to non-profits in response to those bulk mailings: $50 billion

**Sources: U.S. Postal Service, E Magazine, Advertising Mail Marketing Association, Direct Marketing Association, Consumer Research Institute, Conservatree, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Holy flaming crap--8 MONTHS people! You spend 8 months of your lives opening junk mail?!?!? That's freakin insane--INSANE I tells ya! It's not only annoying, but it's a bane on the ecological health of our planet. You can probably wrap the earth twice over with just those stupid AOL disks that they keep sending you. But you can fight back. Take back your mailboxes, people! Like Public Enemy said: "Fight the power"! Here's some great online resources you can start with:

http://www.newdream.org/junkmail/
http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/
http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglistdave
http://www.junkbusters.com/
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm
http://www.junkmailstopper.com/

It's alright to have junk in the dumpster (that's where it belongs), it's alright to have junk in the trunk (in fact, it's preferred), but it's NOT alright to have junk in your mailbox. Take a stand, say NO to junk and say YES to a more eco-friendly earth.

This public message provided to you by Johnny Boy: Purveyor of Truth, Justice, and the American junkless way.