This week’s tip is to reduce junk mail, and our quote is from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
Think having a green corner in your church newsletter or bulletin is a great idea, but don’t have time to research or write one? Episcopal Climate News is here to help! Every Monday, ECN offers a free green-living tip and a theological quote that your parish can use. Just copy/paste the text below, and feel free to edit/shorten as your space requires. Share this week’s column on Facebook.
Living on God’s Earth
By Episcopal Climate News, facebook.com/EpiscopalClimateNews
This week’s earth-friendly living tip: Reduce junk mail
Did you know that the total amount of junk mail sent in just one day contains enough energy to heat 250,000 homes? Over the course of a full year, it takes 100 million trees to create that much paper–and all the carbon emissions that go along with logging and shipping!
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has lots of tips for how you can reduce the amount of junk mail you receive:
- Use services like the Direct Marketing Association and http://www.OptOutPrescreen.com, plus the websites of Retail Me Not (formerly Red Plum) and ValPak, to unsubscribe from mailing lists.
- These services are only good for homes, but there are steps you can take at work too. Business-to-business mail is intended to generate income and solicit new business. When you get catalogs, advertising flyers, or offers from companies that you will not do business with, ask them to remove you from their list — they’ll be happy to save the money.
- Whenever you supply your name and address to a new company that might sell your information (warranty card, subscriptions, contests, etc), ask to be placed on a do-not-mail list.
- Recycle what you do receive.
For more information, visit https://www.pca.state.mn.us/too-much-junk-mail
Episcopal Climate News quote of the week: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
“To commit a crime against the environment, against the natural world, is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for humans to degrade the integrity of earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forest or destroying its wetlands; for humans to injure other humans with disease; for humans to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life with poisonous substances: These are sins.”
– Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Eastern Orthodox Church
Episcopal Climate News 
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