Junk Mail, Our Forests and Global Warming.

According to ForestEthics, an NGO based in San Francisco, one hundred billion pieces of junk mail are stuffed into American mail boxes every year -- around half of which are never opened. An annual 100 million trees are cut from the world's forests to produce this junk mail. Trees that could have otherwise played a vital role in countering the effects of global warming.

Even though some junk mail proponents argue that the paper can be recycled, recycling is only second best to reducing the need.

ForestEthics found that greenhouse gasses created each year by junk mail are equivalent to:-

• 9,372,000 passenger cars.
• 11 coal fired fired power plants.
• Heating 12.9 million homes.
• Mowing more than 20 billion homes.