The holiday season brings more than warm greetings and thoughtful gifts. It also brings an assault on our mailboxes, trash bins, and landfills. It starts with the catalogs. Each year, over 19 BILLION catalogs (60 for every person in America) are mailed. Here's what that means:

You probably have no interest in many of the catalogs that clog your mailbox each day. Recycling is the best idea once you receive them. The typical Ocean County household puts about 20% of the kind of paper that can be recycled into the trash. For more on this topic, see the Island Blue Pages, page 45.

 
According to the United States Postal Service (USPS), 19 billion cards, letters and packages will be delivered this holiday season. That's three pieces for every person on the planet.  Not only a lot of paper, but also all the fuel to deliver it!  Then there's all the wrapping paper that ends up shredded on the floor, and again, into the trash bin. Becoming more conscious of our paper consumption, and making smarter choices, can have a dramatic impact on our environment.

Here are some things you can do to stop paper waste in our postal system, your mailbox, your trash bin, and our landfill. 
 
CatalogChoice.org (or click logo below) is a free service that allows you to decide what gets in your mailbox. Use it to reduce your mailbox clutter, while helping save natural resources. Their mission is to reduce the number of repeat and unwanted catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. You can opt out of unwanted catalogs and connect to the Cool Catalogs that have committed to honor your mail preference requests. Show your support to these merchants by visiting their online, paperless shopping options. It's easy.

 

 

Consider sending ecards instead of paper greeting cards this season. There are several excellent websites that make it easy to create a unique and personal greeting and send to your address book or email list. Take the next step, and tell your friends and relatives why you've made this choice. Ask them to do the same next year.
 
Think about wrapping your gifts in non-traditional paper--newspaper comics for the kids, financial news or magazine pages for the adults. It's fun to think of what kind of paper captures the recipient or gift enclosed. You'll be giving that paper a second life before you recycle it.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that fine particulate emissions from coal burning plants are responsible for 100,000 premature deaths per year.
 
Process Systems and Components, Inc. (PSC), located in Mt. Holly, NJ, is a leading provider of air filtration products that remove these, and other types of pollutants. Their product line includes dust collector bags for industrial applications, roll goods, and Membrane RZ for extremely fine filtration. Their dust collector bags filter out particulates as small as one micron. PSC concentrates it's R&D on creating new products for industrial applications such as chemical plants, utilities, and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
 
Committed to greening our environment by developing better filters, PSC also sponsors LBIF's "Get Yourself Green" programs. More information is available at www.processsys.com.