Mark Johnson Custom Homes Blog

Wilmington, NC Green builder Mark Johnson Custom Homes understands the importance of recycling and would like to share the following information about recycling paper, courtesy of NCGreenPower.org.

• Every ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees compared to paper made from virgin materials.
• Instead of using a new piece of paper for rough work, turn over a used copy and write on the other side.
• Junk mail is more than an annoyance. It clogs landfills as well as your mailbox, and costs millions of trees and tax dollars every year.
• 5.6 million tons of catalogs and other direct mail advertisements end up in U.S. landfills annually.
• The average U.S. household receives unsolicited junk mail equal to 1.5 trees each year—That’s more than 100 million trees for all households combined.
• 44 percent of junk mail is thrown away unopened, but only half that much junk mail (33 percent) is recycled.
• Americans pay $370 million annually to dispose of junk mail that doesn’t get recycled.
• On average, Americans spend 8 months opening junk mail in the course of their lives.
• Start by registering with the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). It won’t guarantee you a life free of junk mail, but it can help.
• You can also go to OptOutPreScreen.com, which can enable you to remove your name from lists that mortgage, credit card and insurance companies use to mail you offers and solicitations.
• One option is to use the Stop the Junk Mail Kit developed by the Consumer Research Institute.
• The website JunkBusters.com provides further guidelines for reducing junk mail and other intrusions, from unwanted e-mail (Spam) to telemarketing.
• Pay your bills online! Eliminate your paper trail as well as the energy used to transport paper bills.
• Go digital. If only 10 million people in the US change Mon-Fri newspapers to online, we could save almost 50,000 trees each year!
• Manufacturing products from recycled materials requires substantially less energy and natural resources than products from virgin materials.
• You may think that a lot of paper gets recycled, but according to the National Recycling Coalition, Americans throw away enough office paper each year to build a 13-foot-high wall of paper from New York to Seattle.
• Do your part – recycle!