Wanna Cut Down on Waste? Stop Advertising.

There are several things that frustrate me about the waste disposal crisis and how it is contributing to environmental problems. For example, it’s beyond me why Styrofoam still exists when there are other plastics that can more easily be recycled, and I try to avoid buying new electronics as much as possible because nothing’s made to last these days and I know whatever I buy will end up in a landfill a few years from now. But what’s started to annoy me more than anything else lately is how much paper is wasted on unnecessary advertisements.

I guess this bothers me so much partly because of the fact that I’m pretty much blind to advertising. I’ve never been persuaded by newspaper ads to buy anything, and when I’m watching T.V., the second the commercials come on, I zone out and start daydreaming or brainstorming some new project I have in mind. Yet I can understand that newspapers, magazines, T.V. networks, and radio stations all rely on advertisements for funding. What I can’t sympathize with at all are the millions of paper advertisements that I find in my mailbox all by themselves.

Every week, I end up getting 3 different issues of the “Local Values” newspaper, which is a chunk of newsprint the size of an edition of Pioneer Press, filled with countless multi-page advertisements for sales at Jewel, Dominicks, Menard’s, Meijer, Hobo, Aldi, etc. I’d hardly call them “Local Values”, considering the nearest Meijer is at least an hour’s drive from my house. Additionally, at least once a week, I end up finding envelopes full of coupons for roto-rooters, weight loss clinics, and podiatrists, none of which anyone in my house have EVER used. And every couple of weeks, K-Mart and Target send out huge newsprint advertisements independent of any mass-advertising publication.

Maybe some people get a big thrill out of finding out where all the sales are ahead of time, but for the rest of us, why the hell are trees being cut down in order to produce all of this? When I find these things in the mail, I send them directly to the recycling bin without even looking at them, so clearly they aren’t manipulating me into buying things and boosting the economy. And what about people who don’t even bother to recycle them? Lots of people throw crap they don’t want into the nearest wastebasket without giving it a second thought, and other people are unsure of how to go about recycling paper and instead only recycle bottles and cans.

While I have no doubt that various businesses will continue to send out millions of advertisements per week, I think there should be some way of fighting this. Many of us who receive junk emails will see a message at the bottom of the page that says “Click here to unsubscribe”, even though email messages are very easy to dispose of and have no effects on the environmental problems the world faces. So why can’t we unsubscribe to paper junk mail as well? People often complain about spam, although it takes up no physical space and requires no use of natural resources, yet nobody seems to see the problem with paper advertisements.