Save the environment: Hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button | Opinion

Even though I’m probably just average-at-best when it comes to being environmentally conscious, I still envision myself cruising into heaven via the express lane. Convertible top down, wind in my hair. No waiting. Angels waiving me through the pearly gates without any scrutiny. How does this square? How can I reconcile the fact that I’m willing to plunk a plastic straw into my iced coffee every morning and still expect to proceed expeditiously through the pearly gates?

Well, it’s because I’m a physician and a healer, of course! I know, I know — what hubris. And I don’t even practice pediatrics or neurosurgery, or any other specialty worthy of such impunity. I’m just a community-based ophthalmologist (who will probably never publish even so much as a case report).

Maybe my math is flawed, but this is how I explain away my lazy attitude. After a lifetime of healing people — in my case, fixing their eyeballs — I will have earned some karmic credit to help bolster my resume. Shouldn’t that compensate for my inconsistency separating plastics and cardboard from the rest of my garbage at the recycling bin, especially if I’ve also been a relatively kind human being?

With all joking aside, the point that I’m trying to make is that I know I can do better. Physicians and health care workers can’t shrug-off our responsibility to environmental issues just because we have a vague sense that our vocation has a net positive impact on the planet and humanity. It’s not OK to ignore climate change, just because we cardioverted an arrhythmia or stymied a gangrenous march beyond the confines of a pinkie toe.

The good news is that, for us, there’s a relatively simple elixir. All we have to do is gaze into our perpetually overflowing mailboxes with a sense of awe and start asking some serious questions.

If you are not in the medical field, you would be shocked — truly, truly shocked — at the constant bombardment of specialty journals, continuing medical education course offerings, and pharmaceutical advertisements sent to us — and so much of it wrapped in plastic. Time magazine and Sports Illustrated don’t come wrapped in plastic, but when I get Ocular Surgery News, well, they don’t want me to miss the insert about the latest and greatest glaucoma eyedrop. Still, isn’t there another way to ensure that your marketing materials reach their intended audience?

How do we opt out? How can we stay more vigilant? And could other professionals inundated with unwanted catalogs and flyers learn a similar lesson?

Whenever health care workers sign up for continuing medical education, it appears our contact information is shared across a wide network of affiliates. For example, when I created a Healio account to watch a 20-minute glaucoma podcast, my mailbox was inundated with no less than 10 affiliate publications promoting conferences and other continuing education opportunities. All of them include marketing materials wrapped in plastic. By checking your account settings on such websites, you can unsubscribe from print or digital mail.

Another more general approach — one that all of us can use, whether doctors or not — is to just try and unsubscribe from bulk mail by visiting the Direct Marketing Association website (DMAchoice.org) which is listed on the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer advice page. For a $5 processing fee, you can customize your opt-out preferences. The registration fee is good for a 10-year period. The nonprofit corporation seeks to reduce, but not eliminate completely, the quantity of promotional mail that you receive.

This may not seem like the sexiest fight, but it’s still important. The health care community is a highly targeted audience. The prescriptions we write and the medical devices we favor have huge financial implications. Marketers are willing to spend enormous sums of money to ensure that we see what they are promoting, without regard to the environmental consequences.

Besides, the truth is that I have a better chance of using these plastic-wrapped periodicals to protect my tabletop from the splatter of chicken vindaloo sauce than actually reading them.

And I need all the help I can get with regard to my heavenly resume.

Dr. Eric Dessner is an ophthalmologist in Brooklyn, NY. He is the CEO and founder of medmic.com, a media and discussion site for the health care community.