Category Archives: green

How to Get Rid of Your Junk Mail

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Part of this blog is about how to live and survive here, and hopefully I can even provide the “born and raised” U.S. reader the occasional nugget that might enhance their living experience. One of the annoyances when you live here is that you realize the level of junk mail is tremendously higher than what I experienced in Europe before. About a year ago, there wasn’t a day when we did not get about 10 pieces of mail from unwanted senders. Once my wife was in the database, Victoria’s Secret sent us a catalog almost every day. According to some sources on the web, they mail out over a million catalogs per day.

While we shredded (to prevent identity theft) and recycled all this junk, there had to be a better way. Thankfully, soon afterwards a friend send us a link to greendimes.org. We immediately signed up for the premium package ($20 and they plant some trees as well) to reduce the junk. Now, I want to stress that they do have a basic package for free. There are also other options, such as catalogchoice.org. You could simply do most of these items yourself, such us getting your name on the “Do not mail list” of the direct marketing association (DMA).

In any case, ease of use for us was compelling with greendimes, and after a year, I can only state that we are really happy with the results. Their premium offering includes the following:

  1. You enter all the catalogs you don’t want anymore and they contact the sender directly and have your name taken off the list
  2. They send you ready to send postcard to be send to the database mailers that you simply sign and put into the mail to stop the “John Doe or current resident at … mailings”
  3. They put you on the Do Not Mail list of the DMA
It took about 4-6 weeks to see the first results. After 3 months I think we were about 50-70% down. Today, I think we have reduced the junk mail by >90%. There are even days where we do not receive any mail, that was unheard of before. A little extra hint: We were also very diligent about throwing things back in the mail, crossing out the address, and placing a big fat “Return To Sender: PLEASE TAKE OF LIST!” on the envelopes. According to our mailman, this does only work when the original mail was sent first class. If it came to you via “presorted” standard mail, the USPS will not send it back, as it’s not covered. They will simply throw it away. So, save yourself some time and recycle it right away and try other options.
Whatever you do, do something about this waste of resources. Help to stop it. Sign up with one of these services, or call the sender, and ask them to take you off their list. It’s your planet too. Do you know any other options or service providers that do this? Please let me know! Thanks!

The Story Of Stuff

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Hi there, it’s been some time since I posted, somehow got too busy with the daily life. But I collected a bunch of interesting topics I want to post about, so there will be new content very soon. Also, the weather was just too nice here in San Francisco, I am waiting for a rainy weekend now to pimp up the blog a bit more and work on the design etc. Anyway, more to come.

My friend Sanaa recently sent me a an interesting link for a video series, The Story Of Stuff. You should check out the whole series on Youtube. Parts of America are waking up that this level of consumption and waste production cannot go on endlessly, so there is hope. But then again, if I look at how many of my neighbors are actually properly recycling, I guess we still have a long way to go. And that’s in SF, where people are already considered pretty “green”.

Check out the rest of the series, it’s well done.

Take Your Golf Cart to Work

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You might have heard that even people in the U.S. now started to complain about gas prices, even though they are still at about 60% of European prices (at $4/gallon). But people really started to shift their behavior here. The commuter trains at Caltrain are busier than before, although they are still not filled to capacity for the most part.

But driving has been reduced enough to have a noticeable impact. Gas consumption at the pump has been falling for 2 consecutive months, and according to the Department Of Transportation (DOT), the amount of miles driven has been reduced as well. Finally people started to think and adjust their behavior.

Other things that come with this are more the exceptions, like taking your golf cart to work, but still worth mentioning, as the WSJ reported. See below video for a snapshot.