It is always depressing to walk to the mailbox only to find a big handful of meaningless flyers, credit card offers, mortgage offers, random catalogs, etc. Very rarely is there anything of any value in the mailbox. Then all that junk mail has to be dealt with...either recycled, thrown away, or strewn all over the house because the children love looking at all the "exciting" pizza coupons. It is emotionally tiring to weed through it all and deal with it...not to mention the environmental impact of the paper, printing, and gas it took to deliver it.
I just read at GreenDimes that 100 million trees are cut down every year and 28,000,000,000 gallons of water are used to produce this junk mail that no one wants!!! And our cities spend $370 million a year just to handle the waste of our junk mail. And did you know that average American spends 8 months of their life opening up junk mail? Is that not just crazy?
Part of my Spring Green goals was to reduce junk mail, and I have finally begun the process! Here are a few options for you if you want to opt-out of receiving certain kinds of junk mail and thereby making an emotional and ecological investment.
- Check out GreenDimes that I mentioned above. You pay a dime a day for them to reduce your input of junk mail and they plant a tree in your honor every month.
- Register with the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association. They will list you in their database in the "do not mail" category.
- Go to OptOutPreScreen.com which allows you to remove your name from lists that credit card, mortgage and insurance companies use to mail you solicitations.
- Call catalog companies and ask them to take you off their list. When you need something, just go look at their website!
- Ask your magazine companies and credit card company not to "rent" your name to other companies and to put your name on their "do not promote" list.
- For more disturbing facts on junk mail, you can read this at the Native Forest Network.
6 comments:
So true, Aimee.
Wouldn't it be lovely to just receive handwritten lovely parcels in the mail instead of the "junk" we get. (Bills included in the "junk" catergory!!:)
Thanks for these great links!
A few years back I wrote to the DMA. My mailbox now has room for parties!
Just an observation on the DMA thing... I find it interesting that they are asking for $1. When you write to them directly, it's free. (Oh, now I need to dig up that address!)
L.L.
I think at the DMA website they also give the "snail mail" address if you want it!
Hi- thanks for mentioning GreenDimes in your post! We really appreciate your taking the time to tell others about our services. Make sure you check in from time to time and see what new ideas and projects we are working on to help make the world a better place. Take good care and thanks again for your post!
Best,
Kendra
www.greendimes.com
Aimee,
Thanks for listing those great resources. I have been calling every phone number on every piece of junk mail I have received for the past several months and it has really worked. My mailman even noticed!
Thanks for the links. OptOut is new to me. These really do work. We only get local fliers these days. I'd love to figure out how to opt out of that too!
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