I understand why you are upset. Job loss is on everyone’s minds right now. However, I would just like to point out to you, respectfully, that junk mail does in fact harm everyone in an indirect way. The amount of trees cut down for junk mail every year (100 million!) and the amount of carbon emissions made by processing those trees into mail and delivery of the mail greatly impacts the health of natural systems on which humans rely on in very intricate ways. If we continue to exploit the very thing which enables us to have our comfortable lifestyles in the United States, we will eventually have to deal with the consequences of our actions, which are expected to be dire. My point is this: without an environment that is healthy enough to support the 6.8 billion people on earth, everything else becomes small potatoes. We will not have the luxury of jobs and a stable food source and a stable income if our society breaks under the strain of an earth that cannot support our economic activities.

I agree with you that workers losing their jobs puts a lot of American families through unfair hardship. But I’m just trying to point out that the people at Forest Ethics are not trying to make people lose jobs, they are trying to help curb climate change by reducing superfluous manufacturing. Climate change will affect everyone…you, me, poor, rich, people with jobs, and people without jobs the world over. Looking out for the environment IS looking out for fellow Americans and world citizens.

Perhaps a really good way to focus your frustration would be to encourage the government to recruit the unemployed and train them to work in green jobs. In that way, workers are employed and contributing to the advancement and progress of our nation, and it would help America to rise to a leadership position in the search for sustainable business methods. I think there is a huge need for people who are as passionate as you are on that front. Thanks for your time!

Each one of these jobs is taking up a very large chunk of the waking hours of a human being – 9-5, Monday to Friday, 50 weeks a year for a few decades. Is junk mail really worth this? People packing envelopes, rotting in front of computers, or risking their lives logging. The waste of human potential here is equaled only, perhaps, by the massive destruction of nature it entails. If all that’s happening at the end of the day is that you’re tossing this to the curb, then what is this all for?

The real question here is why it’s so hard to get by, even for a family with two working parents in some of the richest countries in the world.

Once thing that irritates me the most is carrier walk route bulk mail. It says ECRWSS on it. Resident. Current occupent. Esspecially those fast food menus. It is unstoppable. Even if it hints at the company that printed it, often they will not stop it from coming to my house. If any such do not mail laws come in, I can only hope and prey that it includes the carrier walk route parasites. Looking up to canada, companies can do unaddressed mail, but people can place a sign on their mailbox to optout, and the carrier will not drop the junk in. They solved the problem a long time ago. This is one of those “only in america” things – the usps doesn’t deliver unaddressed mail, so the carrier walk route mail is addressed. But the addresses come from the usps’s database of “yes this house exists” database, with absolutly no way to optout or flag an address for do not mail. So these parasite carrier walk route mailers abuse the hell out of the database – and get free rein on our mailboxes and our privacy. Please stop the insanity…

How will either of you, personally, succeed? By being the best postal worker you can be. And if for some reason that’s not good enough, then you’ll need to find a different job. It’s not a pleasant thought, I agree, but it is reality.