Watch Good Magazine’s Music Video Short on E-Waste

A majority of the electronic waste of the US is shipped to China and India in violation of international law. Please consider the following actions to stop the blackening of rivers and the poisoning of our distant cousins in Asia:

• Recycle your computers, PDA’s, and gadgets properly. Earth 911 is an amazing resource to help you figure out how to recycle these items safely.
• Buy your electronics used. It’s less expensive and lowers production of these toxic materials.
• Ask your favorite electronics manufacturers to become Cradle-to-Cradle certified. Apple, HP, Dell, Sony, Panasonic, and JBL are all capable of designing products so that we can enjoy them guilt-free. We just have to ask them…all of us have to ask them.

Learn more about e-Waste and what you can do from the Basel Action Network, who contributed documentary footage to this incredible video. This is the kind of video that needs 2 million hits on youTube…pass it on.

Photo: Junk Mail Tank by Burtonwood and Holmes

Forty-one pounds…that’s the staggering weight of the 560 or so pieces of junk mail each adult American receives per year. Almost half of it remains completely unopened and unread before heading straight to the landfill. Sadly, recycling junk mail is especially difficult due to the high concentrations of heavy metals used in the inks. Year after year, boreal forests get wantonly turned into garbage as more than 100 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are wasted in the production of junk mail. This whole frustrating process is perpetuated by everyone, from the USPS to credit reporting companies like Equifax and Experian, selling your name for three to twenty cents a pop to anyone in the market to buy it.

Fortunately for us all, there are ways to triumph over the junk mail debacle. Eco Cycle and StopJunkMail.org have compiled the key steps to ending the junk mail trail yourself. They give you all the details on who to call, what online forms to fill out, and who to give the “Return to Sender” treatment. Or, if you are willing to pay a fee, you can get someone else to do most of the legwork for you. Yay.

41pounds.org

Frustrated with their own junk mail woes, three brothers from Michigan figured out how to trump the junk mail system and began to share the service with friends. Only one year later, 41pounds.org is 5,000 members strong and growing rapidly.
Cost: $41/5 years
Benefit: 41pounds.org gets your name “off the list” and keeps it off for five years. Anytime you find yourself besieged by a new set of junk mailers, you just email 41pounds.org and they take care of it for you. A third of the fee goes to an environmental or social cause of your choice.

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