Are we Reusing enough?

Living in San Franciso bay area, we have all rights to claim to be some of the most environment friendly citizens on the planet -  Stricter smog tests for cars, most spare the air days, heavy taxes for cleaner gasoline. Is that enough, what are we doing ourself to protect and conserve the natural resources. Are we recycling / reducing / reusing enough?
I personally find very difficult to balance it with consumerism here. Look at these and decide for yourself:

1. Post office is delivering tons of junk mails for advertisers. Runs on tax payer's money, earns tons of money from advertisers and again dumps all those garbage to tax payers to clean. No body is there to ask them, why and I have no idea, how to make them stop delivering those unsolicited advertising to my mailbox. They have a point: "We deliver a first class mail for you from coast to coast for 44 cents" Hmm.. we (ultimately planet earth) is paying a heavy price for their ill designed business practices. And I know that earth will not split if they stop delivering mail for 44 cents. Internet has enabled us to make better choices for the sake of trees where these paper come from. 
2. When my daughter brings her backup from school, I see no less than 10 colorful printed flyers a day in her backup given by her teacher at school. They all are targeted for buying, auctioning, advertisement for private lessons and other business advertisements. Some of them suggest that you send your kid with money tomorrow so that they can have an opportunity to buy things themselves. Think about this for a second. Public schools run on tax payer's money and most specifically to the tax payers who live in that area. If the school administration wants to turn the school into an advertising house, why do they need public money. After all a company like google can run just with advertising revenue, why not our schools. Kids should be taught to reduce paper junks, reuse and recycle. Opposite is happening. See what we can do to stop this?
3. When we moved to our new townhouse this spring, somehow we convinced ourself that we will soon need a new refrigerator. Time passed by quickly while second kid was growing up fast and we could not find time to shop for a new refrigerator. The Thanksgiving brought a new wave of consumerism and  we started scanning ads posted on bfads.net I spent hrs and hrs researching the make and model and rushed through many stores on black friday to later found out that the models on heavily discounted prices were sold out quickly even if they had very poor reviews. I decided to give my shop refrigerator decision another thought. Opened the refrigerator door and looked at the model we have...

• not more than 7 yrs old top of the line maytag 
• vegetables were getting freezer burn because temperature was not setup correctly
• daily slider was not fitting properly, because some plastic was broken 
• was not cleaned for a long time
• water filter was not replaced for a while

guess what we did, cleaned inside out, got a super glue from home depot for $2.49 and glued the plastics, bought a puriclean filter from ebay for $30 (still waiting to arrive) adjusted the temperature and here we are.
Saved $1600, well that what the black friday sale price  for the samsung 25 cubic feet french door at best buy. Lesson 101 of Reusing.. Forget Consumerism .. save Thanksgiving !
Bye for now..