Reduce Junk Mail: Five Money Saving Tips
“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.” — Dr. Seuss
The Lorax tells the story about the plight of the environment and how we need to shift our emphasis away from consumption to a sustainable quality of life. Dr. Seuss encourages 4-year-olds to save trees. As a 40-year-old, I’m trying to save the environment.
Last week, a friend sent a gift for my fortieth birthday from a service that stops junk mail, plants trees and will hopefully help save the environment. I now have a membership to GreenDimes. Here are five tips to save time and money by trying to eliminate unsolicited offers in your mailbox.
Tip #1: Use an online service to reduce the amount of junk mail that you receive. Here are three that will do it for a small fee:
www.greendimes.com
www.41pounds.org
www.stopthejunkmail.com
Here’s how GreenDimes stops junk mail. They write, “We’ve researched dozens of direct mailers and literally thousands of catalog publishers. They contact direct mailers and catalog publishers on your behalf and make sure that you stay off of their mailing lists. Most junk mail from national and regional direct marketers will stop, including credit card offers, insurance offers and unsolicited coupon flyers.”
Tip #2: You can save the fee by writing the direct marketers yourself. Eco-Cycle provides a step-by-step guide to remove your self.
Tip #3: Call this Opt Out number: 1-888-567-8688 New American Dream writes, “The main consumer credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax, maintain mailing lists that are often used by credit card and insurance companies to send out junk mail. The good news is that you can call a single number to get your name and address removed from the mailing lists circulated by all three agencies (as well as that of a fourth company, Innovis).” Just call: 1-888-5-OPTOUT!
Tip #4: Ask Congress to create a national Do Not Junk registry modeled after the successful Do Not Call registry. Take action here!
Tip #5: Stop mail addressed to former residents. Are you still receiving mail address to a former resident? Jeanine and I still get a monthly credit card statement for the couple that we bought our house from. For two years, we’ve written, “Please forward, not at this address” on the envelope and nothing happens.
So here’s a suggestion from the County of Los Angeles — Dept of Public Works: “If the former residents of your house neglected to fill out a ‘Change of Address Form’ or it expired, you can fill one out for them. You must fill out a card for each unique last name.”
“On the card write ‘Moved, Left No Forwarding Address’ as the new address. Sign your own name and write on the form ‘Form filled in by current resident of the house, (your name), agent for the above’. Once submitted, this information will be entered into the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address (NCOA) database and remain active for a year and a half.”
Time is money. According to the Center for a New American Dream, each of us will spend an average of eight months of our lives dealing with junk mail. Take 20 minutes and get off the lists!
If this is your first visit to Queercents, then click here for an introduction to the site.
Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.
The proposed recent “Do not mail” is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing – and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?
I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!
The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, “”In today’s [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman’s mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer’s right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.
To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”
We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.
http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html
Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel
Doesn’t bulk mail help subsidize other mail? Will the USPS have to further raise regular rates to compensate?
I simply send back all SASE’s that come from bulk mail but leave them empty. Then the USPS gets the postage both ways and I double the costs of postage for the mailer without providing any business.
Brent: that’s great…except that it’s not sound economics
You’re assuming that keeping junk mail at its current level and keeping the postal rates at their current level is the best case scenario (we’ll ignore for the moment the fact that postal rates are going up again in the next few weeks) if, however, there was less mail to deliver, and fewer trucks and planes were needed to do so, that would lower costs as well. Not to mention the fact that the postal service is in direct competition now with other companies for its delivery service. I don’t have any problem paying a little more to send mail when I have to, considering how little I send these days (online bill pay is a wonderful thing), especially if it buys me a little freedom from a stuffed box full of unwanted paper.
ah. I forgot to factor in the main thrust of the argument: if you’re sending back the envelopes, you’re actually costing the post office money; they have to expend the resources to get that envelope back to the sender – who already paid for the postage.
I do the same as Brent, but i jam the envelopes full of the rest of my junk mail. The weight adds to the cost of the postage if I am correct and it leaves my desk clear. 🙂
What about the junk that the letter carrier stuffs in your mailbox once or twice a week that isn’t even posted mail but just junk flyers that some company pays the Postal Service to “deliver” for them? How do you stop that junk? I get more of that than I do of stuff that’s actually addressed to me, or, rather, to “resident” or “occupant” (but actual mail to my address).
Does anybody know how to get rid of those goddamn loose fliers addressed to “Resident”? They’re even a pain to throw out because bits and pieces fall all over the place. Then I have to chase them all over the street (when it’s windy). I know it’s unhinged, but it infuriates me.
The Direct Marketing Association explicitly does NOT have anything to do with mail addressed to “resident.” My Post Office is totally uncooperative, even though I have a right to refuse any mail I want under the PO’s own regulations. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of on how to deal with it, and found nothing.
Does anyone here know how to get this garbage stopped?
Chris,
1) The postage on the envelopes that you return to the senders is not prepaid, unless it actually has a stamp on it. Returning these “business reply mail” envelopes is a net increase in revenue to the post office and a net increase in costs to the recipient. That postage is only collected when the envelope is returned.
2) The largest expense in the postal system is, by far, the delivery of the mail to individual houses. This is essentially a fixed cost – the trucks and the carriers run the same routes every day whether they are full, half-full or almost empty, and there is substantial excess capacity in most areas. The letter carrier is still dropping off some mail to your box. Adding another letter to the system has a marginal cost for sorting, but it is essentially zero.
That said, I don’t care if bulk mail does subsidize other forms of postage. Bulk mail costs me to process. I’d rather pay $1 for the single envelope that I mail each month than to have to spend 40 seconds every day dealing with junk mail.
IDEA: For those of us that live in apartment buildings (or maybe even for those that don’t): Purchase a trash can, write on the side “JUNK MAIL”, and place it next to the community mailboxes.
(Although it would probably fill up too quickly 😛 )
Hey- thanks for mentioning GreenDimes in your post! We appreciate your taking the time to tell others about our service! We are happy to get your name off of direct mail and catalog companies mailing lists and to plant a tree on each members behalf every month. Make sure to check the site from time to time to see what other ideas we are working on to make a big difference in our world. Thanks again for the mention and for giving a dime!
Kendra
GreenDimes
Hey,
Thanks for turning me on to this. I am so frustrated by junk mail. I try to do things to help the environment and my mailbox is filling up with a ton of crap that I did not even ask for! Drives me crazy.
Thanks so much for the great info. I think I will check out GreenDimes.
Nathan’s trash can would be identity theft nirvana. Now a community shredder…
I usually write “Please remove me from your mailing list” (anyone know where to get a stamp made?), shove the papers back in the envelope, and ship it back. It takes a second or two, but it costs the junk mailers and hopefully they’ll respect my wishes. I have noticed a large decrease in the amount of stuff I’ve gotten since I have started doing this, so maybe it’s working.
while getting junk mail is a pain, i’m more concerned about the wasted resources involved. paper, ink, delivery, etc. and for what? so i can put it straight into the recycling bin?
Anyone have any success filling out a chance of address card for a previous resident? I am getting mail for the last FOUR people who lived in my apartment, but when I tried to submit cards for them, the lady at the post office wouldn’t let me.
In this week’s Carnival of the Insanities:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2007/05/carnival-of-insanities_13.html
I keep a cardboard box under my desk and throw all the junk mail in it. When the box is full, I tape a business reply envelope to the now-sealed box and bring it to the post office. If I’m lucky, some business or organization which I loathe has sent me a solicitation with such an envelope enclosed.
There is nothing so satisfying as knowing that such an organization will have to pay a lot of money to receive a box of my junk mail. Obviously, I take out all the pre-approved credit offers and ID-theft kind of stuff, but it gives me great satisfaction to do this.
I’ve seen a website that allows digital submissions to the 1-800-5-OPTOUT number, any details about that?
TerminalDigit, RTFA! Step #5.
Cool ideas. what about the UK?
oh, I LOVE what JarJar Binks does… might try it until something better comes along. Sometimes I write deceased on them and post them back…
Hello there! I am writing with an exciting update- did anyone see GreenDimes on Ellen yesterday? The service was featured in her go green product selection! Read about it here: http://www.blog.greendimes.com
Anonymous, I did RTFA—maybe you should read my comment! When I attempted to submit these cards filled out as specified, I was not allowed to do so!
Standard Mail is forwarded only with special endorsements from the mailer. If no endorsements, then standard mail is destroyed by USPS.
If the endorsement is “Forwarding Service Requested”
and the mailpiece is undeliverable with a reason for nondelivery, then the mailer must pay a fee when the mailpiece is returned to the postmaster.
Meh, looks like greendimes is dead… I found another company doing basically the same thing though goodbyejunkmail.com