Aim for the Head

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

This is the mantra of the efforts to “save the planet”.  Now, while I’m the first to deride people over that particular turn of phrase (I mean, seriously, the planet is not really in danger – the ecosystem humans require to live in is, but until a comet lines us up in its cross hairs the planet is doing just fine), I do actually agree with many of the methods and goals of environmentalism.

I’ve blogged numerous times about reducing junk mail, and I’m about to do it again.  I simply cannot say enough about the program that was called Green Dimes, then Mail Stopper and is now called Precycle.  Back when I first bought my house we were getting a mailbox full of junk nearly every day.  There was so much wasted paper that it was a pain in the ass to bother dragging it to a place that would recycle it.  It seemed like such a no-brainer that better than recycling junk mail was to stop it from coming at all.  Combining the use of this service plus switching over to eBilling for nearly all my bills, I have an empty mailbox three or more days a week.  The junk is just gone.  So, not only do I not have to deal with it coming in, I also don’t feel guilty about throwing it out because I’m too lazy to recycle it.  Win-win.

We’ve switched over almost entirely to drinking water (or Crystal Light which is just water with some powder mixed in), so this means less cans and bottles.  Much like the Precycle above, not having things to recycle is better than recycling.

We also tend to buy in bulk when we can, which reduces the amount of packing materials.  Combined with the stopping of junk mail, I almost feel ripped off paying for weekly trash service because we only cart the can to the street once a month (more often if it’s stinky).  I say almost because driving to a dump and paying per bag ends up costing about the same, and since a few dozen of my neighbors use the same trash service (and more often than us) I wouldn’t be saving anything by cancelling our curb pickup.

Over the winter, the wife an I experimented with a space heater.  Rather than heat up the whole house we kept the thermostat relatively low and then just heated up the room we were in.  It worked out fairly well and we managed to save a little money.  It’s a plan we are going to try this summer as well with the use of fans.  Though while a heater is a heater, a fan isn’t an air-conditioner, so we may be met with limited success.

All in all, I really do feel like I’m doing my part.  I encourage everyone to take a look at their lives and see where they can make changes, not just for “the planet” but for themselves and their own pocket books.  Saving the environment is good.  Saving money is great.  When you can do both at the same time, that’s awesome.

Face it.  The world is changing.  I moved out of my parents’ house back in 1994, and in all the years since I have received a full batch of anywhere from six to ten phone books, yellow and white pages, every year.  And in all that time, I can recall perhaps five or six times I ever used them.  Nowadays I can find anything I might possibly need a phone book for on the Internet.  Or rather, I’m going to use the Internet and any business that isn’t out there is probably not going to get my dollars.  Even the Yellow Pages themselves have opened up YellowPages.com, and if you happen to live in a state serviced by AT&T you can even browse an online version of the printed phone books.  I’m sure more services are out there as well…

So, given my penchant over the last couple of years to stop junk mail, you can imagine how I feel about my annual stack of phone books that appear on my door step.  True, I simply drive them over to the post office where they have a dumpster for phone book recycling, but the printing of the books is just a giant waste to begin with.  (Yeah, yeah… I know, “In Case of Emergencies”, but I keep written down all the emergency phone numbers I would need, especially the ones I would need if I had no power or Internet access.)  That’s why I was very happy when I got an email from Green Dimes about Yellow Pages Goes Green.

I’ve signed up to have them stop sending me phone books, and now I just have to wait and see…

Today is Earth Day.

So, being that that is what today is, I figured it was time for another edition of what I will from now on refer to as “Probably Not Saving The World!”

Previously on the blog, I’ve mentioned my efforts to reduce my junk mail. The first couple of steps I took helped, but it always seemed to be a momentary slackening of the flood, not a stoppage. Then I was pointed at GreenDimes. I signed up for their $20 premium package, and the junk mail has all but stopped. At this point, the only things I get that I consider junk are a few local items, which I can excuse because they are local advertisements of local businesses and not big chains. Its nice, and it makes me feel better about not wasting all that paper.  With the GreenDimes service, you can even get the names of previous tenants dropped from lists, which is great since at this point nearly a third of my junk was for people who don’t live at my house.

We still keep up on the recycling, but even more so, I recently suffered through caffeine withdrawal in order to stop drinking Cokes, and have pulled way back on the number of canned and bottled beverages I drink. With a decent filter, tap water is just as good, if not better, than anything you can buy at the store. Plus, the more things you buy at the store (like sodas and bottled water) are more things that need to be trucked around the country. While I haven’t gone totally for “buying local”, I am trying to cut back on all the things I buy where I can.

Next up, we are looking to have an energy audit done on the house. That’s where someone comes and inspects the house to find all the places where you can improve efficiency, mostly for heating and air conditioning, to cut back on usage. As it is, we are trying to let the house stay cooler in the winter and a little warmer in the summer if we can stand it.

I’m really hoping that within the next five years I can get solar panels put on the house. You can even get money from the government to help with that, and get a tax write off.

So anyway… Happy Earth Day! Even if you don’t believe in “Global Warming”, garbage is still garbage, and less garbage is good.

A while back, I posted about my efforts to stop junk mail. In January even, I posted here about how I was still getting junk. And even though I can’t seem to win the fight against direct mailings for local businesses, the war is go well on other fronts.

In particular, the fight against credit card offers is going extremely well. In my first post on the subject, I provided a link to a site from the credit card offers themselves. This, perhaps in conjunction with other efforts, have actually resulted in a near complete stop of credit card solicitation.

I say “near complete stop” because the companies I already have credit cards with do occasionally send offers for different cards they represent, or sometimes offers to my wife if she isn’t listed on my card with them. While still undesirable, this is at least tolerable, since it is, at most, one a month in total. I will make an effort to stop this as well, but its no longer high on my list.

Some of the other junk does appear to have stopped. At least once a week I will go to the mailbox and find nothing there, sometimes even twice a week. And the days of my mailbox being jammed to overflowing with catalogs and coupons appear to be over.  To make further inroads against junk, I’ve signed up for GreenDimes, which has gotten very positive reviews from people I know in regards to how it helps stop mailers, especially those nasty “Resident” addressed ones.

All in all, I’m much happier not getting all that junk.  However, the United States Postal Service isn’t happy about it.  My brother forwarded me a link to a Washington Post article which in part is about how the USPS actually relies on the revenue generated by junk mail in order to keep running, and how as an employer of millions of Americans, the USPS (and by association, the junk mail) plays an important role in the economy.

Personally, I’d rather see them reform the USPS system rather than continuing to try to justify the support of the glut of junk mail being sent. 

It has been a while since I posted about my efforts to reduce junk and go a bit green. So, here is an update…

Despite my best efforts to make it known that I do not want to receive direct mailings, it seems that there is no way to get them to stop outside of becoming a hermit. The problem appears to be that no matter how many lists I get myself removed from, old lists will always exist and get resold. The post office also seems completely uninterested in my plight. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to convince them that my wife and I are the only residents, all previous owners don’t live here anymore, and we do not desire to have any mail addressed to “Resident” delivered here. Despite this, they continue delivering mail here for people who have not lived here for over two years. Sometimes I’m tempted to get a P.O. Box and move all the mail I want to it and then just ignore the mailbox until they can’t fit any more junk into it.

One by one, as lights in my house burn out, I’m replacing them with lower wattage bulbs. Most of them go from being a 40, 60 or 100 watt bulb down to a 7, 11 or 15 watt bulb. It takes some getting used to as depending on the bulb type and manufacturer, some low watt bulbs start dim and “warm up” to their full brightness. Also, all my outdoor lights are properly shaded so that light from the bulbs goes downward, and I’m still refraining from reporting the street light that is out. I really dislike light pollution, and now I have the benefit of when I walk outside at night I can actually see the stars.

Winter came, and to try to lower my own costs and whatnot, the wife and I have been keeping the house at 66 or 68 degrees. That’s new for us as we (I) usually like to keep the house warmer so that I can be comfortable wearing shorts and t-shirts, but I’ve switched over to sweats and long pj’s. Now I just need us both to get into better shape so that when summer comes we won’t feel the need to combat the heat of our out of shape bodies with blasting the air conditioning.

All in all, I’m spending less money, lowering my footprint, but still losing the war against junkmail. Here’s to hoping I can turn the tide eventually…

I am happy to report, my efforts are showing. I’m down now to getting maybe one credit card offer per week between my wife and I. Other junk has also cut back quite a bit, to the point where usually once a week my mailbox stays empty all day. As my requests to be removed from lists continue to filter through I expect that to get better.

And while I appear to be winning the war, there are some battles I am losing. The Golfsmith is a hateful spiteful company and I call on people to boycott them. My attempts to get removed from their lists have instead signed me up for more lists. I get at least one mailing per week now, correctly addressed to me, sometimes two. In addition, I’ve had to block them on my email since they decided to send me more than one email per day advertising their wares. My attempts to get removed from the email lists have been about as successful as getting off the real mail lists.

They do appear to be the only company so far that has done this. Most companies, at most, will ask for a reason why and I just say “I would prefer not to receive the mailer as I do not shop regularly at your store.” That seems to be good enough. If they press I’ll tell them I usually throw it in the trash and would prefer they save the money and my time and not send it to me. With the Golfsmith it appears that I may have to actually have to go to their distribution office and physically force someone to delete my address from their database.

When I began to undertake my quest of removing unwanted junk from my life, I guess I never considered how much other people might want to send junk to me. While I would never ever in a million billion years shop at the Golfsmith and would prefer to never get catalogs or coupons from them, they apparently think that sending me unwanted catalogs and coupons is worth the expense to hedge their bets on the minuscule chance that I might change my mind.

My previous experience with them was that I contacted them directly and asked for my address (with my house’s old owners name) be removed from their mailings because I did not want them. And I thought I was successful because the mailings from them (sometimes two or three a week) stopped. But lo and behold, I reach into the mailbox today to find a new Golfsmith catalog. The only change is that it is now addressed to me instead of the old owner.

Obviously, since I’m already not a customer, ignoring me and treating me badly won’t hurt them… or will it? Like the website says… Probably not. I don’t wield enough consumer power to hurt their bottom line, but I can say for certain, at this point, even if I one day do decide to pick up the game of golf I will never shop at the Golfsmith. They’ve lost any chance of ever winning my business.

Right now, I’m experiencing a respite in the deluge of junk mail. My efforts appear to be working. I think I’ve only thrown out maybe two or three pieces of junk this week. But is this Golfsmith ad a sign of things to come? Will I never be able to escape the junk since they will send it to me even when I ask them not to? And do I have any recourse if they continue?

For now, I’ve emailed to the Golfsmith again asking them to remove me from their mailing list. We’ll have to see what happens next.