Did you Know?

  • 5.6 million tons of catalogs and other type of mail similar to this are thrown away every year in the U.S.

  • Must People believe that SPAM stands for Short, Pointless, and Annoying Messages

  • Spam was really based on a sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

  • The average American household receives unsolicited junk mail equal to 1.5 trees every year

  • 44% of junk mail are thrown without unopening them

Impact of Junk Mail on the Enviroment



We here at Green Dimes agree with you, Junk Mail is annoying, is invasion to your privacy and is a concept that completely fails its purpose. For whatever reason you might have to be against it, we can all agree that it is a silly idea, that is no longer practical nor productive. Even the first recorded piece of mail sent to multiple recipients with advertisement purposes caused a negative reaction than a positive one, and that was in 1864! Clearly this is not a reasonable practice for the 21st Century.

But beyond trivial facts as that, the real number can be very alarming. Every year, in the US alone 100,000,000,000 pieces of mail are accounted for as Junk Mail, around 30% of all the mail delivered in the world. American households receive a total of 104.7 billion pieces of junkmail or 848 of junkmail per household, requiring 6.5 million tons of paper. It take MORE that 100,000,000 trees to produce the total volume of admail that arrive each year. To put it in perspective, that's like saying of clear cutting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. That is why the importance that many organizations similar to ours have given to tree planting as well as seeking to stop admail.

The Manufacture of junk mail releases more greenhouse gas emissions er year than the emissions released by 9,372,000 MILLION average passenger cars.

The Canadian Boreal forms part of the greater Boreal Forest, which stores more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem on earth, is being logged at a rate of 2 acres a minute, 24 hours a day to produce junk mail and other paper products. Deforestation of Indonesia's tropical forests is responsible for 8% of global carbon emissions. This destructions is largely driven by demand for pulp and paper for end use, like junkmail.

And, if that wasn't enough, the vast majority of admail sent is discarded, sometimes without even opening the envelope. And in many ways only a small percentage of that paper gets recycled. This is way Green Dimes seeks to raise critical awareness on the huge threat to the environment that Junk Mail is.