Are We Burying Ourselves in Junk Mail?

You may remember the great mailbox debate of 1990. The very first of 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth was to "Stop Junk Mail." We were each chewing up one and one-half trees a year with our daily load of bulk mail, reported the little blue book form the Earth Works Group, and we were all producing almost two million tons of garbage. For what? Why not tell Ed McMahon to keep his $10 million, the underwear sirens at Victoria’s Secret to get dressed, and the panda bear at the World Wildlife Fund to nibble on berries instead of our bleeding hearts? Junk mail wasn’t the most serious crisis in the world, but it was a sign of our consumer culture run amok, a vast paper slick hitting almost every mail slot in the land.

The Junk Mail Hall of Shame

Over the past few months, we have undertaken an unscientific experiment that we would not recommend to others: Opening all of our mail and actually reading it. We could have found worse, like "Opportunities Unlimited" which stole thousands of dollards from senior citizens with fake sweepstakes contests or the "Doris Day Animal League" which spend over 90 percent of its funds on more fundraising, but we also could have found better. And empty mail box, for example. Here are now our favorite junkmeisters:

The Magazine Racket

The magazine newstand business breeds excess like mad. The best newsstands sell only half the copies they display–the rest are waste on arrival. What with proliferating titles, shrinking rack space and outright corruption, there are no easy solutions.

Not Dogs Anyone?

Being a carnivore can be confusing. Few have been able to identify the species of origin of the "mystery meat" served by airlines, and the perennial debate in school cafeterias as to which unmentionable animals parts have made their way into the hot dogs will probably never be settled. But today, there’s a growing array of products available which originate not on the hoof but in the field–soybean and wheat fields, to be precise. Some so succesfully imiate the taste and texture of meat that fast food fans are duped and vegetarians unsettled by the sinewy similarity of these products.

Bright Makes Blight

If it is true, as John Wesley preached, that "cleanliness is next to Godliness," the heavenly prospects of us well-laundered Americans should look as bright as our shirt collars–or our gym socks, gardening pants, or any of the earthly garb we toss into our state-of-the-art washing machines and douse with high-powered detergents, chlorine bleaches and rub-on laundry boosters. Indeed, our devotion to cleanliness has bolstered what is now a $4-billion-a-year business in laundry detergent alone.

Revenge of the Wackos

Let me confess, before anyone complains about the smell of bias rising from this review, that I am indeed one of Rush Limbaugh’s "long-haired maggot-onfested FM-type environmentalist wackos." I’ve been known to birdwatch before breakfast, eat camping food at home and wear a hemp baseball hat to protest chemical cotton. We’re a peaceful bunch, my maggots and I, so we were shocked to open Limbaugh’s monumental bestseller, The Way Things Ought To Be, to read that we want "to roll us back, maybe not the the Stone Age, but at least to the horse-and-buggy era." I’d quote further, but my mastodon is now eating his book.

Good Science, Weird Reporting

Allow me to flaunt a few prejudices with the hope that the harsh light of day will temper them. One is the notion that science is a cause of our myriad environmental problems because of its attachment, regardless of the consequences, to the valueless pursuit of technological advance. And scientists themselves? They are contemptuous of the rest of us, they eschew idealism or enthusiasm of any sort, and they reserve judgement on policies that I support because their jaundiced routine of cautious analysis prevents them from seeing the desirability of vigorous action on any front.

Testing for Toxins

To an outsider, environmentalists and animal rights advocates would appear natural allies. But one basic philosophical difference divides the two schools of thought: to the extent that environmental organizations work on animal issues, they tend to emphasize the health and viability of animal species, populations and habitat; animal rights advocates, on the other hand, concern themselves more with the well-being of individual animals and work on issues dealing with individual animal suffering and pain.

A Spotted Owl by Any Other Name

What has a red head, lives in old-growth forests in the Sioutheast and is closer to extinction than the much publicized spotted owl? If you guessed the red-cockaded woodpecker, you are a rare bird yourself! Indeed, while the controversy over logging spotted owl habitat in the Pacific northwest is well known, a quieter storm is brewing in southeastern states, where the red-cockaded woodpecker is in danger of being wiped out after decades of intensive forestry. Like the spotted owl, red-cockaded woodpeckers also need intact old-growth – in this case, longleaf pine forests.

Rainforests of the Sea

In the mangrove forest, life abounds. Here live shorebirds, crab-eating monkeys and mudskipper fish that skim across exposed swamp mud to make their ways between water holes at low tide. The mangroves have been called the "rainforests of the sea." These trees have evolved in harsh environments of brackish waters and changing tides, establishing balanced, complex ecosystems along the tropical coasts of Africa, Australia, Asia and the Americas.

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