Daily Score Blog

A little frustration of reading our blog--or so we've heard from readers--is that it's hard to keep up. No surprise there: In 2007, we posted around 290 pieces on the blog, more than one per weekday. It's hard even for us to read 'em all.

So in the spirit of recycling, here are links to reader favorites from this year, as well as some of our picks for categories we created. Please feel free to add your own picks and pans in comments. And while we're at it, thanks to our blog readers--some 200,000 of you this year--for reading, commenting, and keeping us on our toes. Keep it coming!

Most popular posts, in order:

• The most popular posts of the year were two recent posts on the surprising math of mpg: 18 is enough and How SUVs can save the climate
• My Toxic Water Bottles
  
• Car-head: The opening salvo to Alan's "Bicycle Neglect "series (related posts The Wheel World and What Bike Friendly Looks Like were just after Car-head in popularity).
• The United States of Climate Change (Again)
  
• Minimum Wage's Minimal Effect on Unemployment
• I Know Why the Caged Nerd Sings
  
• One Mile from Home: A 2006 post from Alan's car-less series.
• The Weakest Link: Second post in the Bicycle Neglect series
• Sorry Climate, I had to Clean my Keyboard

On my email accounts, I have filters that keep out most spam. But my regular mail boxes at home and the office? No such luck! Advertising arrives in the post daily, by the sheaf and by the ream.

It annoys me. Here I am, scrupulously recycling and contemplating the climate impacts of my consumption, while L.L. Bean and its ilk are dropping slabs of paper in my mail box: paper that took carbon-storing trees to create, climate-polluting factories to mill, and carbon-belching trucks to haul. All told, it’s 41 pounds of junk mail a year per American.

Admittedly, junk mail isn’t high on Cascadia’s lists of menaces. According to estimates developed for the US Postal Service, it accounts for just over one tenth of one percent of all energy use (at least, if Cascadia matches the US average), plus one-fiftieth of municipal solid waste.

Still, it’s worth a little attention, especially when you consider that virtually no direct mail actually works. Postal advertising is an industry where a mass mailing is considered successful if 2 percent of envelopes or catalogs generate a sale. That means 98 percent of the paper and ink was pointless waste. If we could wave a magic wand and make it disappear, both the mailer and the recipient would be better off.