The Low Down On Green Living
October 2nd, 2007
How To Tuesday: Cut Your Junk Mail Avalanche
Stumble it!
Forty-one pounds…that’s the staggering weight of the 560 or so pieces of junk mail each adult American receives per year. Almost half of it remains completely unopened and unread before heading straight to the landfill. Sadly, recycling junk mail is especially difficult due to the high concentrations of heavy metals used in the inks. Year after year, boreal forests get wantonly turned into garbage as more than 100 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are wasted in the production of junk mail. This whole frustrating process is perpetuated by everyone, from the USPS to credit reporting companies like Equifax and Experian, selling your name for three to twenty cents a pop to anyone in the market to buy it.
Fortunately for us all, there are ways to triumph over the junk mail debacle. Eco Cycle and StopJunkMail.org have compiled the key steps to ending the junk mail trail yourself. They give you all the details on who to call, what online forms to fill out, and who to give the “Return to Sender” treatment. Or, if you are willing to pay a fee, you can get someone else to do most of the legwork for you. Yay.
41pounds.org
Frustrated with their own junk mail woes, three brothers from Michigan figured out how to trump the junk mail system and began to share the service with friends. Only one year later, 41pounds.org is 5,000 members strong and growing rapidly.
- Cost: $41/5 years
- Benefit: 41pounds.org gets your name “off the list” and keeps it off for five years. Anytime you find yourself besieged by a new set of junk mailers, you just email 41pounds.org and they take care of it for you. A third of the fee goes to an environmental or social cause of your choice.
Green Dimes
Started by entrepreneur Pankaj Shah, GreenDimes is a for-profit company with a mission to make millions of households in America (as well as Canada and the UK) junk mail free.
- Cost: $15 for 1 year
- Benefit: GreenDimes helps you reduce 70-95% your junk mail for 1 year. For every Junk Mail Reduction Kit purchase, they plant ten trees on your behalf.
Stopthejunkmail.com, based in Boulder, CO, has an extremely easy-to-use online tool which allows both individuals and businesses to get off the list.
Cost: $19.95/individuals & $24.95-84.95/businesses
Benefit: Stopthejunkmail.com promises to do absolutely every step for you, no postcards to send and no forms to sign. This service allows you to choose exactly which catalogs and mailers you’d like to stop receiving. One tree is planted by American Forests with each subscription, and if you move households, Stopthejunkmail.com will give you a discount on your new address.
Luckily there are many options to end the senseless cycle of junk mail. And with incredible organizations like these looking out for you, letting go of forty-one pounds has never been so easy.
And if you love the idea of ending junk mail madness on a larger scale, you can join Forest Ethics and their Catalog Cutdown campaign.
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Comments
Burn Clean Project » Blog Archive » Trees Over Trash: Ending the Junk Mail Paper Trail
October 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
[...] Posted by Jenn Breckenridge on LowImpactLiving.com [...]
Darice
May 20th, 2008 at 8:13 am
catalogchoice.com
Mike Rylander
May 20th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Here’s another “interesting” way of looking at it… hehe…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXOMxfs6gBc
Tim Henry
May 25th, 2008 at 8:07 am
There is another service out there called Myjunktree the cost is $20 a year and if you move you just change your address in the system for free. They use an automated system also and it is real easy to use. They also get rid of the paper phone books delivered to your home. As an added convenience you can sign on teh Do Not Call list and get a copy of your credit report.
Libby
June 9th, 2008 at 10:45 am
A group of anti-junk mail experts sponsored videographers to produce humorous videos to stop junk mail. Watch the videos at http://www.proquo.com/videocontest !
bot
July 10th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
cool site , thanks
Steve
August 26th, 2008 at 10:28 am
I happen to be one of the owners of MyJunkTree and as a new company I search the web to see if we are getting any visibility out there and it seems the word is getting out. Thanks for the support.
We launched the company because we were tired of all the junk mail we were receiving and we personally did not want to bounce all over the web to contact all the different companies to stop it all. First and foremost we wanted to let people choose what they wanted to let come to their home knowing that some people really do like some of the coupons and catalogs. So our clients choose what they want stopped.
We also had to provide a service that is different than the other services out there, so here is what we offer:
1. We have a database of over 1300 catalogs that you can choose to stop.
2. We have over a 2000 charities/Non-Profits that you can stop solicitations from.
3. Stop the delivery of the national phone directories.
4. Stop the delivery of the weekly coupons.
5. Stop the general credit card offers as well as the ones from your own major bank.
6. Stop the miscellaneous junk mail from the data brokers.
7. You can register on the National Do Not Call Registry from the website.
8. You can order your no strings attached free annual credit report right from the website.
9. We plant trees with every new membership.
And, yes we are a paid service and yes you can do everything that we do for free, if you want to do all the research and spend the time contacting the companies yourself it can easily be done. We have just done all of the legwork for our clients and feel there is value in the service we provide.
Top 5 Last Minute Green Gifts - In The Loop
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
[...] off of the numerous direct mail lists is both tedious and somewhat daunting; helping a friend put an end to this wasteful cycle can be very much like performing a Christmas miracle. Let companies like GreenDimes and [...]
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