There was about a two-year period in my life when I was essentially a bored housewife. (Man, did that suck.) That was about the only time I actually occasionally looked at the circulars that came in the mail or were jammed into the Sunday paper. It was entertaining to marvel at the cheesy photos and usually horrific layouts, draw conclusions about the target demographics, speculate on whether or not these things really worked… (I did say bored housewife.)
I always felt pain and guilt and anger about the trees that had to die to make all that crap, and then there was the environmentally unfriendly act of transporting them, the poor mailman/lady…
I always recycled them, but I never got around to getting one of those stickers I heard about that you put on your mailbox to tell the mailman/lady thanks but no thanks. (I never actually saw one. Are they real?)
They’re real in France, supposedly, although I’ve never seen one here either, and Vincent doesn’t know where you get them. But no matter. I found out about an innovative, 21st-century alternative that might actually give advertisers an incentive to change their evil ways.
At www.pubeco.fr (short for publicité écologique), you can mail in a request for a no-junk-mail sticker or download a PDF and print one. They’re also available in some stores (though I haven’t seen them…).
The sticker says “NO ADS! I’m protecting my planet! I’m reading them on the Net!”
The deal is that certain advertisers have agreed to pay to put their circulars online instead of on paper. If you really are the bargain-hunting/coupon-clipping type, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that delivers the ads that apply to your area through your newsreader. (If you still don’t know what that means, shame on you. Ask me. It’ll change your life.)
It’s a commendable move on the part of advertisers, and I’m going to support it. I might even do some guerrilla environmentalism and print out enough of these babies to slip into the mailboxes of everybody in my building… (It’ll be a sociological experiment. I’ll be able to see what percentage of people give a shit.)
If you’re in the US,and stopping the junk-mail deluge has been on your to-do list forever, here are some alternatives for stopping not only the circulars, but also all those unwanted catalogs. (I mean how many As Seen On TV! catalogs do you need to get before you finally either stop the madness or break down and buy the George Foreman countertop hamburger griller thingy?)
There’s GreenDimes which, as we speak, is offering to pay you a dollar to sign up and have yourself removed from mailing lists. ProQuo is another one. Both of these services are free.
Of course, the dream scenario would be a no-bulk-mail list like the no-call list for telemarketers. (That program worked like a dream. One quick phone call and no more phone spam.) Maybe if the US ever gets a government that favors the environment over the corporations, we’ll see such changes.
Maybe.
I clicked right over there and downloaded and printed out the sticker to attach to my mailbox — and only then did it strike me that my letter carrier might not read French. Maybe we need one in English.
Actual conversation:
(Note: names changed for privacy)
“Vacuum Tube, you’ve got to help me!”
“IC, it’s 3AM…”
“I don’t have any electricity!”
“Did you call the utility company?”
“I can’t!”
“There is a telephone number on your utility bill, IC*…call it.”
“I can’t; I don’t have a utility bill or telephone book!”
“Right… Remember when you told me I was “an old, inefficient environmentally unfriendly dinosaur” for having my electricity bill delivered to me by the postal service, and for using a printed telephone directory? And openly bragged to LCD and Transistor how much more “modern, efficient and environmentally-friendly” you were than me, by having your electricity bill sent to your electronic mail address and using the Internet page 411.ca instead of a printed telephone book?”
“Um, yeah…”
“Sorry, IC. But you’re about to learn what Hubris is.”
-click-
About the Anonymous comment above: Someone who is obviously a coward used the e-mail address of someone very close to me to leave this comment. Hijacking someone else’s e-mail address is very bad blog etiquette, by the way. The person whose e-mail address was hijacked for this purpose says he doesn’t know anyone who might have an IP address in St. Louis, MO. Very curious.
Of course, it could be a fake IP address. Those are easy to get. If that’s the case, it’s clear the person went to some trouble to conceal his identity just to suggest that I’m suffering from a hubris problem.
I’ve heard worse. I approve critical comments on this blog and always reply to them rationally. If they’re somewhat rational.
I’m not afraid to state my opinions and face the music when I’m challenged. Too bad this reader was afraid to show his face and chose to leave a passive aggressive comment rather than just “coming out and saying it.”
One of the things I love about French culture is that they come out and say it, no matter what IT is. But people here attack each other’s ideas, rather than attacking the person with the ideas, as they do in American culture. Because of this, people here feel more free to express themselves, always with the knowledge that they risk being challenged, but not attacked personally. The end result is that real, substantial debate takes place here everywhere from bedrooms to street corners to boardrooms to TV talk shows.
It’s refreshing and liberating.
In France you just write “Pas de Pub s.v.p.”, and it stops. In the good old USA,however, the postal service is required BY LAW to deliver the stuff.