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I spend a couple minutes each night sorting the day's mail. Bills into a desk drawer to be paid later, account statements into the file cabinet to be forgotten, the rest into the recycle bin. The “to be recycled” fraction for many of us has increased over the years, with credit card offers, store catalogs, fundraising requests, and (literally) tons of other junk mail. A 2008 Washington Post article reported 104 billion pieces of junk mail in 2007. That's a lot of trees to cut down and turn into paper, move about the country, and then go straight from my mailbox to my recycle bin.
The Federal Trade Commission's web site provides information on reducing the amount of unwanted junk mail. Consumers can contact each of the three major credit bureaus with a request to be removed from marketing lists. The easiest way to contact the credit bureaus is through a free online service they run for consumers.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) provides another online service that can reduce the amount of delivered junk mail. The DMA claims to represent 80% of the total volume of direct mail. Their service costs $1.
I signed up for these services several years ago and noticed a dramatic drop in the amount of unwanted mail. I still get political mail and catalogs, but only from companies and people I have contacted in the past. The “do not mail” services went a little way toward reducing resource and energy use and a long way toward reducing my irritation with daily mail sorting.
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