...using less - living better?



A rhetorical question if I may... How many people out there are, like me, fed up with the vast amount of unsolicited junk mail that seems to clog our mail slots and fill our recycling bags each week? Judging by the number of "No junk mail" signs in my neighbourhood I'd say there are a lot of you.

Really though! Does anyone actually read it? Do any of you really care how many houses realtor A has sold and do you actually compare this information against the flyer from realtor B? Just how many credit cards, consolidation loans or mortgages does the average person apply for? If you need your house painted or your gutters cleaned, do you go digging for that flyer that you know came a couple of months ago? How many people actually make decisions based on the things they've taken from their junk mail?

Most of the unwanted stuff that we get goes directly, unread and often unopened, to the recycling bag. I barely have the time to read the things that I want to read or that I should be reading these days. Never mind everything else. Each week it gets carried out to the curb so that it may be returned, recycled and reprinted so that it may be re-delivered another day. Sadly, our yellow bag is often more full than the blue bag, blue box and the garbage can combined. I'm not kidding! Frankly, in this day of electronic access to nearly everything, I find the scale of this waste a little disturbing.

Which brings me to the point today where I had decided it was enough. I don't even know how I got on this mailing list, but now for the second time in just over a week I received a newsletter from East Vancouver's own Libby Davies. Champion of everything, protector of all, but apparently a poor environmental steward. I guess that's not completely true, there are three names on the envelope mine, my brother in law's (lives downstairs) and a name I've never heard of but can only assume that he used to live here, so I guess the intention is that I read it and pass it on to the other two guys. That's called reducing. Anyway, the title of today's bulletin for those interested is...

Eco-energy - Using Less - Living Better

A bulletin that describes a new residential energy efficiency assessment service for Canadian homeowners in order that we may improve the energy efficiency of our homes and... reduce our homes impact on the environment!

Wonderful! I've always been a bit suspect when it comes to the NDP's true position on the environment and this just makes me scratch my head a little more. In the Community Links bulletin that I received from Libby Davies last week she tells us about some of the very important things that she's been working on for all of the citizens of East Vancouver. These include workers rights, affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and so on.

Anyone that's followed my ramblings up to this point knows that I am very fond of recognizing the small steps, since they all lead to bigger things, especially where the environment is concerned. So while two bulletins (3 pages and 2 envelopes) in a little over a week may not seem like a big deal to some, to me its ridiculous especially when the information could easily be sent out electronically and further since it came without my asking for it in the first place. An information pamphlet sent out during an election to inform voters of their choices is one thing, a steady barrage of letters and bulletins is another thing entirely.