creative responses to junk mail

This marvelous list of ideas comes to us from the good people at ProQuo.

"Junk Mail is renowned for cluttering mailboxes, increasing the risk of identity theft, and, of course, killing millions of trees every year. Not surprisingly, it elicits annoyance from most people. But, believe it or not, it also elicits creativity from others."

Here are a few:
CUSTOM PORTRAITS- A self-proclaimed “rabid recycler,” Artizona artist Sandy Schimmel uses unwanted materials, such as junk mail, to create impressionistic portraits. Her portraits focus on individual faces and explore themes such as beauty and fashion. "I believe we are an aggregate of tiny bits: who we are and where we've been - or who we want or pretend to be. The tesserae, the 'tiles,' I create from junk mail represent those bits in color and texture and meaning.”

MULCH- A reader of the finance blog Get Rich Slowly regularly shreds his junk mail and makes mulch out of it. Since mulch is basically composed of tiny bits of trees, he's recycling and his gardening no longer takes the same toll on the environment. Here are some of the guidelines he follows to account for junk mail's ink and varied material:
1. “I only shred the non-glossy stuff, and try to avoid colored ink as much as possible.”
2. “I shred plastic items like credit cards and CDs separately and discard.”
3. “I only use the shreds where food is not grown, just to be safe. You can also use it in the bottom of flower pots inside the house to save potting soil.”

VENETIAN BLINDS- A blogger named Matthew Rasmussen was interested in making practical use out of things people are expected to throw away. He theorized (correctly) that he could attach about three months worth of junk mail to his venetian blinds and significantly lower the amount of light passing through his kitchen window (and still be able to raise and lower the blinds without any difficulty). The process included a whole lot of measuring, bending, taping, and even some beer drinking (not a process requirement, I'm assuming). Full details on the process are available on his blog.

Big ups to Korina for being a rad Public Relations agent for rad companies.