Thanks to the Internet, email, smart phones, and social networking, snail mail is increasingly becoming a thing of the past. These days, most of us dread the daily collection of bills and, even worse, all of that junk mail. Besides being annoying, junk mail takes a drastic toll on the environment. Annually, U.S. residents receive a collective 100 billion pieces of junk mail produced from more than 100 million trees being chopped down. The damage junk mail causes to the environment is equal to the greenhouse emissions produced by 3.7 million cars
It gets worse; check this out:
- The total amount of junk mail delivered to U.S. households each year accounts for about 30 percent of all mail delivered around the world.
- On average, a single household will receive 848 pieces of junk mail annually. Entire households average one personal correspondence in a week’s time compared to eighteen pieces of junk mail.
- Approximately 44 percent of all junk mail ends up in a landfill un-opened.
- The average American will spend eight months of his or her life dealing with junk mail.
- In 2005, the U.S. Postal Service processed more junk mail than First Class mail for the first time ever.
The good news is we don’t have to take it anymore. There are some simple ways you can say no to junk mail and give your mailbox more room for correspondence you actually want—like birthday cards from Grandma—and help save the environment in the process.
Contact senders directly. Every time you purchase something online, via catalog, or sign up for a free offer, your name and address is submitted to companies like the Direct Marketing Association or Abacus. You can fill out an online form to remove your name from Direct Marketing mailing lists or email Abacus at abacusoptout@epsilon.com to remove your name from their lists. Make sure you include all of your information: name, address, previous address, etc. Also, let your bank and creditors know that you want them to keep your information private.
Let the Postal Service work for you instead of against you. There are USPS forms you can fill out to prevent receiving certain types of solicitation. Ask for Form 2150 to end correspondence from a particular company. Don’t EVER fill out a permanent change of address form. Even if you move, fill out the ten-month temporary form, and contact those people whom you want to have your address.
Join the national “Do Not Mail” list. Sending junk mail is actually pretty expensive, and if companies know you don’t want to receive it, there’s a good chance they’ll stop bothering you. The trick is getting a hold of every sender you receive junk mail from. DirectMail.com has a National Do Not Mail List that allows you to get your name off the junk mail hit lists. Here’s your warning: the Do Not Mail List is not the same as the Federal Communications Commission’s Do Not Call List, which means the government does not back it. So while Direct Mail will work on your behalf, they don’t actually have any power. Removing your name is left to the discretion of the sender.
Join the nationwide effort to end junk mail. A couple of years ago, Forest Ethics launched a campaign called Do Not Mail, which is working city by city to help us reclaim our mailboxes and ultimately, our forests. The goal is to lobby the U.S. government to establish an official national registry to help limit the use of junk mail as a marketing tool.
The campaign has already made some serious progress. In January of 2010, Seattle’s city council passed a resolution that will call for a Do Not Mail registry in Washington. You can launch a campaign in your city to pressure your local government to work on a resolution to ban junk mail. The more cities that work locally, the more likely a nationwide effort will begin to take shape.
