For JUNK MAIL!
Have you started noticing the volume increase in your mailbox yet? It is the holiday season and I’ve started getting catalogs for toys, clothing, food, gadgets, cooking supplies, furniture.
What a waste! The junk mail goes from the sender, to my mailbox and straight into the recycling bin. I DON’T even LOOK at it!
Sometimes I enjoy getting that one catalog from my favorite company whose product I really admire and enjoy browsing and dreaming of future purchases. Mostly, I am just annoyed. I thoroughly dislike receiving the same catalog, “disguised” by a new cover. In fact, my 5 year-old was happily browsing through a children’s halloween costume catalog, when I heard from the backseat of the car, “Mom, this is just the same pictures, but with a different front that fooled me”. I had to laugh. He hit the nail on the head. I think of all the trees and beautiful carbon-sucking, oxygen-creating forests that were destroyed so I could receive the same catalog twice in a two-week period. Most of the time, if it is a catalog I like, I still have the previous catalog, dog-eared from reviewing and re-reviewing my favorite pages.
If you are as annoyed as I am, do something about it! Here are a few suggestions from stopjunkmail.org:
1. write your own simple letters and mail them to the return address of certain junk mail that you receive.
2. make phone calls to numbers you find on catalogs, request either to be taken off their list or sent 
catalogs less frequently.
3. call large direct mail companies or write letters requesting to be taken off their lists (please see this link from stopjunkmail.org for more addresses and information on companies like DMA (Direct Marketing Assn), Equifax, Trans Union, Novus, Experian, ADVO, Harte Hanks and Val-Pak.
4. visit catalogchoice.org to use their free service – you register with them and they will get your name off of catalog mailing lists that you choose. They do not sell your information or give it to catalogs, only what the catalog needs to remove your name from their list.
5. visit greendimes.com to use their service. They do offer a basic free service where you still do most of the work, or you can pay a small fee (their website doesn’t list the price) and sign up for their premium service in which they do the work and best of all – they plant 5 trees for every premium membership.
Take charge of your mailbox this holiday season!
My daughter just entered Kindergarten. My older two graduated already … I am appalled at how much junk mail comes home from the school. I was ready for the first couple of days, but it continues ….. so onward I go… to try to make a change…. which will ruffle feathers, but you know what?
I care. I’ll ruffle.
Thank you for your comment. I have a kindergartner also and the kindergarten teachers have begun emailing the kindergarten newsletter to the parents. Good for them!! We still receive the school newsletter in paper form. Which means that we parents need to request it in email form. The kids also do alot of work on paper, but until everything is computerized, I think it will continue to be that way. I haven’t hired a service, I continue to battle junk mail on my own, using the resources I listed in the article, and it is a constant battle.
Love your site – what a great idea! I work at GreenDimes, and we are pleased for the shout out. Please let me know how your service works for you and let me know if you have any questions.
Our company blog covers efforts to green the world, eradicate poverty and highlight people doing good things – check us out at http://news.tonic.om/.
It’s great that we have this medium to share information to help people change the world.