Carbon Footprint of Junk Mail?

May 13, 2008 11:22 AM

What is the carbon footprint for unsolicited, promotional mail for one year in the USA?

I seem to get a lot of unsolicited, promotional advertisements in the mail each day. I recycle the paper, but what a waste! If we add in the costs to transport the paper, envelopes and cards across the US each year, the carbon footprint has to be huge! What other factors might be included? Maybe this concept can be used to slow the waste.

posted by gnossos to science & nature (9 comments total)

Do Not Mail : The Facts
posted by pedmands at 11:32 AM on May 13

See also this thread (only about 1/2 a page down), which has a link to 41pounds.org, which has a listing of various impacts of junkmail.
posted by pedmands at 11:40 AM on May 13

This is kind off topic, but there's an argument to be made for not recycling the paper: you'll be sequestering the carbon that was in the atmosphere that was absorbed by the paper's constituent trees as they grew. The paper company will probably also plant new trees to replace the ones that were cut down to make the paper, and those trees will absorb more carbon from the atmosphere.
posted by zsazsa at 11:49 AM on May 13

Ouch! Yea, I guess I should have Googled it. I thought it was insightful at the time.
posted by gnossos at 11:50 AM on May 13

I was just being a snarky ass, sorry.
posted by pedmands at 2:11 PM on May 13

If you're thinking of trying to collect this information in hopes of getting a law passed, forget it. SCOTUS has long since declared that junk mail is protected by the First Amendment.
posted by Class Goat at 2:44 PM on May 13

zsazsa:
All the paper I've seen being dumped instead of recycled, rots. This is the opposite of sequestering and my understanding is that it's worse than burning it, in terms of carbon footprint. This is because carbon released as C0₂ (mainly produced by combustion) acts as a greenhouse gas - and is by far our biggest emission, but carbon released as CH₄ (methane, from rotting for example) is far more effective as a greenhouse gas compared to C02.

I'm not sure how you could use paper to sequester carbon. Perhaps composting it in the garden is something to consider - you'll still get rot, but at least you're also getting (carbon sinking) growth out it. However, I don't have anywhere near a big enough garden to compost all the mass of junkmail I get, and I imagine many of the inks and coatings would be considered pollutants. So I think recycling is still the second-greenest option.
(Has someone with expertise in paper cycle weighed in on this?)

The better option of course would be for companies to quit spamming us, but the local pigs are walking firmly on the ground and I hear the temperature in Hell is pretty average for this time of year.
posted by -harlequin- at 5:21 PM on May 13

harlequin, thanks for the schoolin'. For some reason I was envisioning completely sterile, capped-off landfills. But yeah, just about all landfills are sources of methane.
posted by zsazsa at 7:55 PM on May 13

I don't think paper turns into methane, only things like kitchen waste. Might be wrong but that was my understanding, methane is a "wet waste" by-product. Living things decomposing.
posted by stbalbach at 8:15 PM on May 13