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Banish junk mail

By Lori Bongiorno

Posted Thu Mar 5, 2009 2:42pm PST

More from The Conscious Consumer blog

Sick of all the junk mail piling up in your mailbox and home? While it's virtually impossible to stop all unwanted mail and catalogs, there are ways to seriously curtail the onslaught.

It's worth the effort, when you consider that junk mail is a colossal waste of time and resources (paper, energy, etc.). The average American household gets 848 pieces of junk mail a year, and we'll each spend about eight months of our lives dealing with it.

The easiest and cheapest solution to stopping junk mail doesn't exist yet: A national Do Not Mail registry (similar to the Do Not Call list Congress created in 2003).

In the meantime, here are some options worth trying while we wait for the government to take action. You'll have to decide for yourself how much time or money you're willing to spend and adjust your expectations accordingly. Don't expect to see significant results for the first 2 to 4 months.

Free services and DIY strategies

Catalog Choice helps you control how many catalogs you get. The free service has a huge database of retailers that have agreed to honor requests. Some companies (Garnet Hill, Gaiam, CB2, and more) allow you to choose how many catalogs you'd like to receive in a year. So if you like flipping through catalogs featuring sale items or holiday gift ideas, you can still get them. It took me about 15 minutes to create an account and cancel a medium-sized stack of catalogs, although I'm pretty sure I'll have to do this again. I won't mind, since it was relatively painless and I felt a huge sense of satisfaction when I was done.

ForestEthics helps you do the legwork yourself by giving you a relatively short list of direct mailers to call or email. Click links to the Direct Marketing Association, Val-Pak, and OptOutPrescreen.com (to put an end to all those preapproved credit card offers), where you can request to have your address removed from various lists. Some large junk mailers require you to make removal requests via U.S. Postal Service. Enter your name and address into this form to download request forms for each one. I printed out the PDF form, signed 18 pieces of paper, slipped them into envelopes, and popped them in the mail. Total time spent: 30 minutes (not including expected follow-up). Estimated cost for supplies and postage: $10.

Eco-Cycle and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse also offer their assistance in helping you tackle junk mail on your own. Although I found the combination of Catalog Choice and ForestEthics to be easiest for me, these might be easier for you.

Services you pay for

41pounds.org, named for the amount of junk mail the average adult receives in a year, is a nonprofit that says it will get rid of 80 to 95% of unwanted catalogs and junk mail. Everyone in your household is covered for 5 years, even through name changes and moving. If you're not satisfied with the results, you can ask for your money back. Added bonus: $15 of the fee is donated to a charity of your choice. Cost: $41 for 5 years ($8.20 a year).

MailStopper (formerly GreenDimes) says it will stop up to 90% of your junk mail in 90 days. Includes catalogs, grocery store circulars, credit card offers, and more. Added bonus: The company plants five trees when you join. Cost: $20 for 1 year.

Stop the Junk Mail claims that it will reduce your junk mail and catalogs by up to 90%. Added bonus: One tree is planted for every new subscription. Cost: $19.95 for 1 year.

Environmental journalist Lori Bongiorno shares green-living tips and product reviews with Yahoo! Green's users. Send Lori a question or suggestion for potential use in a future column. Her book "Green, Greener, Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-Smart Choices a Part of Your Life" is available on Yahoo! Shopping and Amazon.com.

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Posted by Herring Sat Mar 7, 2009 1:56pm PST
re: james.chaput Billboards are worse than junk mail from an environmental perspective? Really? Junk mail's logging, production, printing, and distribution each year equals the greenhouse gas emissions of over 9 million cars. Borealis published a report on this: http://donotmail.org/article.php?id=119 Now let's look closer at that comparison: Cars take you where you want to go. Those emissions from junk mail, however, are for something that 90% of Americans say they could do without. It's like leaving a car running in your driveway and calling it a responsible use of resources. As for recycling, only 60% of American households have *access* to curbside recycling-- that's according to the Direct Marketing Association. So only 60% of all this stuff that nobody wanted anyway has a hope of getting recycled. Regardless, recycling doesn't bring back a forest, and the carbon-absorbing function it performs. Nor those 9 million cars' worth of emissions per year.
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Posted by Gail Sat Mar 7, 2009 2:39pm PST
Don't forget your local public library when disposing of books, magazines, videos, dvds, cds. If the library doesn't need them for their collection, chances are they have a Friends of the Library group that has a used book store or has annual sales. Puts money back into the community and helps regularly underfunded libraries.
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Posted by Felipe S Sat Mar 7, 2009 4:27pm PST
My gripe:TV ads and ads in my computer system. I pay for the dish and so should not have to watch an ad every l0 minutes of a great movie or show. The ads on my system take up 1/4 of my screen. How can I get rid of one or the two of them? The same thing with my newspaper - there are a whole bunch of ads in the daily newspaper. You see the Sunday Edition.
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Posted by SylviaV Sat Mar 7, 2009 6:49pm PST
stop JUNK MAIL PLEASE.
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Posted by Daniel Sat Mar 7, 2009 7:49pm PST
Banish telemarketing...less jobs Banish junk mail...less jobs Banish mortgage Brokers...less jobs Get rid of or Unionize Wall Mart...Less jobs I could go on and on and on....and you wonder why unemployment is so...if it moves regulate it or kill it!!!!
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Posted by jjack Sun Mar 8, 2009 6:20am PDT
tried them all... doesn't work... just recycle it...
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Posted by LONNIE Sun Mar 8, 2009 6:48am PDT
Put all your junk mail in a post office box, & give it back to them & let them deal with it. There are box's all over town. Take your name off first. They sent it, so they should be the ones to recycle it. Works for me.
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Posted by Rationalthinker Sun Mar 8, 2009 9:55am PDT
Banishing junk mail would impact millions. Think about what that would do to an already weak economy. And the Postal Service would have to go back to a full Gov.agency like it was in the seventies paid with your tax dollars. Printers, copywriters, paper mills, truck drivers an unbelievable number of lives would be destroyed. Many of these people would loose homes. People would be forced into early retirement drawing on funds that you wont have when you retire. Do you really want to pay fifty percent on every dollar you make in taxes to change the world all at once. And how much energy is used by hundreds of millions of people online all day long that wasn't thirty years ago!
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Posted by Marcel L Sun Mar 8, 2009 7:54pm PDT
I have found a solution that works pretty well and has cut my junk mail by 90%: i systematically send back the postage paid envelopes with all the junk mail stuffed in it and a note like: "save time and money, save trees and save the environment. Remove me from your mailing list". Beware of magazine subscriptions offers as they will assume that you want to subscribe and send you the magazines and even send you an invoice, so make sure to cross out or destroy the form. If a mailer doesn't have a postage paid envelop, I send it back with unknown address - return to sender. When you do so, you must cross out the bar-code at the bottom of the envelop (with a marker for instance). Finally, i call the toll-free number on catalogs to be removed. My junk mail has been reduced from few pieces every days to few a month and i expect
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Posted by chris Mon Mar 9, 2009 1:04pm PDT
Great article. But 8 months of my life? that's almost 1 percent of the average lifetime. Thats 15 minutes a day. Who spends that much time on junkmail? A little much
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Posted by Alicia Mon Mar 9, 2009 2:24pm PDT
Although junk mail kills trees what we have to understand is that these companies are paying the US Postal service to deliver mail to you. If they do not deliver the mail then the advertising company is paying for a service they are not receiving. I personally have asked my mail carrier to stop delivering me flyer's and such but he says they are bound to deliver what they are given and they cannot decipher who should get mail. The best we can do is to recycle all the papers and opt to have your cc bills and banking statements delivered online to try to reduce as much waste as possible. www.ecomaidsofla.com
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Posted by patchtheplanet Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:49am PDT
junk mail is a menace to the environment and an intrusion of privacy. retrain postal workers in green collar jobs and in the mean time make sure you recycle. let's work to stop this!
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Posted by jbuswellchar Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:17am PDT
It's ridiculous that there isn't an easy and efficient way to opt out of junk mail. The time has clearly come for a "Do Not Mail" registry. Consumers should have the freedom to decide whether they want to receive direct marketing or not.
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Posted by Comeonfeelthenoise Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:47pm PDT
Stopping Junk Mail is such a no-brainer. This is a simple, easy step for the U.S. to actually take a stand against climate change and unnecessary waste!
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Posted by kristi Wed Mar 11, 2009 5:11pm PDT
the only way to really stop the deluge is a registry like do not call. i'm ready.
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