Friday, March 28, 2008

The Preempted Campaign?

Did Canadian Tire preempt a campaign against them by Greenpeace, or was this just a coincidence? On the day that Greenpeace made an attempt to hang a banner naming Canadian Tire and several other companies sourcing paper from the boreal forests of Canada's great northern wilderness in Toronto, Canadian Tire announced that it is no longer going to publish its paper catalogue. It will sell its wares online henceforth.

Well, I doubt the direct connection, but it is good news for the boreal forest. Let's hope many more companies will follow in their footsteps.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Do Not Mail Campaign Launched

ForestEthics launched a new campaign today to end unwanted direct mail, or junk mail, once and for all.

The website, www.DoNotMail.org, hosts a petition calling for national legislation similar to the "Do Not Call" list. Legislation has been introduced recently in Vermont by Representative Christopher Pearson.

Says Adrian Grenier of HBO's Entourage, a petition signer, "Junk mail is more than an annoying waste of time, it's a waste of our environment."

Monday, March 10, 2008

Newspaper House


A house has been built by artist Sumer Erek out of newspapers in London, UK, to highlight the growing scandal of 'freesheets'. More than 4 million newspapers are handed out free and discarded in the city each day. The underground trains alone have to cope with 9.5 tonnes of them daily. Using newspapers collected by Project Freesheet and the transport companies, the newspaper house is a public art project, which is helping to raise awareness of everyone's responsibility to treat paper as something more than toss-away rubbish. Brilliant. There's a blog about it and a video.