Junking up the planet

Unsolicited mail piles up, killing trees, creating trash

Junk mail is more than a nuisance cluttering up your mailbox. It’s an environmental nightmare.

Americans receive 19 billion catalogs a year. That’s 62 catalogs for every man, woman and child in the nation. Printing those catalogs requires 53 million trees, or 3.6 million tons of paper. Making the paper for those catalogs eats up enough energy to power more than a million homes for a year, sends 5.2 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and requires 53 billion gallons of water, according to figures compiled by Catalog Choice, one of several organizations that are attempting to tame beastly unsolicited mailers.

Every time you fill out a survey, enter a sweepstakes, sign up for a credit card, purchase something by catalog, subscribe to a magazine, give money to a charity or fill out a product-registration form, your contact information is harvested for a computer database.The goal is to use these preferences to solicit more of your business.

Lorraine Kluge jokes that she gets enough junk mail at her Waco, Texas, home to “wallpaper half a room!”

The part-time record-keeper decided to satisfy her curiosity about just how many unwanted solicitations she received.

So Kluge saved three months’ worth of junk mail and ended up with a stack almost as high as a box of cereal — even though she was careful to immediately shred any credit-card offers, she said. Her experiment demonstrated that junk mail can rapidly pile up unless one takes steps to reduce the paper stream.

It stands to reason that anything you can do to cut junk mail will help the environment, as well as declutter your mailbox. You can eliminate some junk mail with a few mouse clicks.

Catalog Choice is a free online service that will notify catalogs (you select which ones) not to send any more mailings to your address. You can access the service at www.catalogchoice.org. Other organizations, including 41lbs.org and GreenDimes, perform a similar service for a fee.

You also can register with the Direct Marketers Association’s Mail Preference Service, available at www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html. The service is free if you sign up online, or there is a $1 service fee for mail registration. Other ways you can cut junk mail:

• Fill out the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address form when you move. That way, at least you won’t get junk mail at two addresses. When moving, though, you can leave lots of junk mail behind by filing your change of address with the post office as a “temporary” move rather than a permanent one, according to a tip from the Care2 “Green Moving Guide.” The U.S. Postal Service sells lists of permanent-address changes to direct marketers but doesn’t bother doing so with temporary addresses. Just be sure to tell your friends, family and crucial creditors where you have gone.

• Request e-mail notifications rather than sales brochures. Many companies give you that option
on their web sites.

• Alert any company that is sending you multiple mailings and ask that the extra listings be deleted.

While you’re declining unsolicited mail, you also can put a stop to pre-approved credit card offers that stuff your mailbox. The major consumer credit-reporting companies offer an opt-out service that keeps your name off lists for credit and insurance offers. If you sign up online, the service lasts for five years. Permanent removal requires that you fill out and mail in a form. To opt out, go to www.optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-567-8688.

All of these organizations warn that it will take a while to see a noticeable drop in junk mail because many mailings are prepared far in advance. But starting the opt-out service is the first step toward stopping the junk mail.