In the past month, I have had a few requests about how to get rid of junk mail. The post office has to deliver it (by law) and everybody complains about it. A fairly new company called SlotGuard is a postal Junk Mail Reduction service for residential customers.
I Just Gotta Tell Ya: (From Do Not Mail)
- Junk mail in the U.S. accounts for over 100,000,000,000 pieces of mail each year—about 30% of all the mail delivered in the world
- Each year American households receive a total of 104.7 billion pieces of junk mail or 848 pieces of junk mail per household, requiring 6.5 million tons of paper
- The average American will spend 8 months of their lives dealing with junk mail
- Entire households only average 1 personal correspondence each week, compared to almost 18 pieces of junk mail
- A national poll by Zogby International found that 92% of respondents discard or recycle at least some of their junk mail without reading it
- Approximately 44% of junk mail goes to landfills unopened
- State and local governments and their citizens spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to collect and dispose of all the bulk mail that does not get recycled. In Seattle, for example, the estimated taxpayer bill for disposing of a year’s worth of junk mail comes to around $400,000
- 6.5 million tons of discounted junk mail entered the U.S. municipal solid waste stream in 2006
- A response rate of less than 0.25% is considered acceptable for the 500 million U.S. credit card solicitations that are mailed monthly
- It takes more than 100 million trees to produce the total volume of junk mail that arrives in American mailboxes each year—that’s the equivalent of clearcutting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every 4 months
- The manufacture of junk mail releases more greenhouse gas emissions per year than the emissions released by 9,372,000 million average passenger cars. Climate Change Enclosed: Junk Mail’s Impact on Global Warming.
SlotGuard talks about Identity Theft (27 million people) but I think what is great about them, is their blog, which deals with specific companies i.e. Discover Card Junk Mail, which has links to who to call to get your name off the list. Most interesting was the political junk Mail. No matter how many opt- outs you do, the postcards from candidates kept filling up my mailbox. I actually told one caller that I will not vote for any candidate that sent me stupid postcards.
Best of all it is only $9.95 a year, very cheap for a junk mail service.
Strategic And Funky Ways to Get Rid Of Junk Mail
Office of Strategic Influence- Send a Brick To Bulk Mailers