Junk mail wars: How do you get rid of the paper pile-up?

Anyone living in an apartment or home with a front porch knows the scourge of paper that can pile-up: leaflets, junk mail, newspapers, phone books, restaurant menus. The deluge is seemingly never-ending.

"Cannot stand it," said Lincoln Park resident Michelle Thompson, 29. "It piles up so quickly you get frustrated and stop picking it up. Obviously that makes it worse."

So what's to be done? The city of Chicago is aware of the problem and has tried to find ways to make residents aware of their options. The Department of Environment works with neighborhoods to decrease the amount of paper waste that gets thrown away.

"We're aware of the nuisance, and try to look at ways to remind people to recycle this paper," said Kimberly Worthington, deputy commissioner for the Department of Environment. "We have the infrastructure to recycle, and this is the low-hanging fruit to go after. We're trying to get it back into people's minds that we need to recycle paper."

According to Worthington, a 2010 waste characterization study conducted by the city found that out of Chicago's 7 million tons of waste each year — from construction debris to household trash — 300,000 tons of waste paper still ends up in landfills.buy landscape oil paintings online.Use bluray burner to burn video to BD DVD on blu ray burner disc.

When paper decomposes in landfills, it creates methane gas, one of the most pernicious climate-altering greenhouse gasses.we supply all kinds of oil painting reproduction,

For residents, the primary way to stop getting waste paper is to sign up to filter your mail preferences at Catalogue Choice. This allows you to filter the type of mail you get, and the city will even act as your agent in delisting you from the mailing lists of marketers. Those endless coupon books that get stuffed in your mailbox? Those appear because companies are trading your personal information. Signing up for delisting can stop junk mail at the source.

"Um, that sounds amazing," Worthington said. "I might do that when I get home."

Still, that won't stop everything. The fliers, menus and miscellaneous door-hangers that end up at residences have no easy solution.

"There's this interesting thing called ‘free speech,'" Worthington said. "So that gets in the way of doing much, but it's really a small volume of paper and more of a nuisance than a problem."

"My roommate put up a sign on our door that basically said, ‘Please,Welcome to the official Facebook Page about Ripcurl. please, please do not leave junk paper at our door,' " said Jesse Williams, 36. "It didn't really work, plus we had this enormous tacky sign on our front door."

For the second annual year the Department of Environment has been trying to raise people's awareness about junk paper and the importance of recycling by organizing a Neighborhood Paper Drive. Groups that recycle the most paper are eligible for cash prizes.

Lincoln Park was not one of the neighborhoods that participated.

"We reached out to all of the alderman, recycling block club captains,Polycore zentai are manufactured as a single sheet, and chambers of commerce to try to get them engaged," Worthington explained. "We had 12 groups last year, and 12 new ones this year. Still, it's the end of the school year and a lot of issues come into play. We can't reach out to everybody."

Last year's drive gathered more than 61,000 pounds of paper to recycle, which equates to 519 trees and the 91 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions and 214,000 gallons of water needed to create the paper being saved.