Living Green

One of the most popular services for the not so militant approach to stopping or reducing junk mail is GreenDimes.

GreenDimes has been touted in the New York Times, Business Week, on Good Morning America, and many more media outlets.

But why is stopping junk mail important (besides it being annoying as...well, as receiving a lot of junk mail)? Get With Green shares some data from GreenDimes that is quite eye opening indeed:

• Your name is typically worth 3 to 20 cents each time it is sold.
• 100 million trees are ground up each year for unsolicited mail.
• It wastes 28 billion gallons of water for paper processing each year.
• That’s 4.5 million tons of junk mail produced each year!
• $320 million of local taxes are used to dispose of unsolicited mail each year.
• The average person gets only 1.5 personal letters each week, compared to 10.8 pieces of junk mail.
• 44% of all junk mail is thrown in the trash, unopened and unread. 

For the Militant

Stamp Out Junkmail:
Green Upgrader shares an idea for creating your own "Retun to Waster" stamp, like the one pictured above, to stamp on all junk mail and send it back to the junk mailer.

They say,

"Clearly, sending the mail back is a less sustainable act, on it’s own, than recycling it because it is tying up resources and using energy, however, this may be a way to affect change in the system that is creating so much junk mail.  The companies don’t send the mail to annoy us, they send it looking for customers.  If they start receiving it back in large quantities with a stamp expressing our disapproval they may start considering more effective means of advertising.  Furthermore, a lot of that junk mail comes from companies paying the US Postal Service to distribute their ads (the ones addressed to “Current Resident”) so maybe if enough of this junk ends up getting sent back through the system tying up the USPS’s resources they would re-evaluate the program."

UPDATE: Buy the stamp, complete with red ink pad, for $11!

Stone Them to Death...Figuratively, but in a Literlal Way:
Office of Strategic Influence has a very funny and clever idea. Mail a brick back to the junk mailer using the pre-paid postage envelope as the mailing label. This costs you nothing, but costs the junk mailer about $25!!!

Their instructions are:

• Step one: Get the "No Postage Necessary" envelope out of the junk mail.
• Step two: Put a brick (or anything) in a box.
• Step three: Tape the "No Postage Necessary" envelope neatly to the box 
• Step four: Put it into those blue mail boxes, the parcel dump at the post office, or in your mail box.

For the Lovers, Not the Fighters

Nickle & Dime Your Way Out:
Previously mentioned GreenDimes has 3 different solutions to stop unwanted junk mail. You can choose their free, premium, or bundle options.

The premium package is probably the most used as it is a mere $20 one time fee to protect everyone's name in your household, provide automatic junk mail removal tools, plant 5 trees on your behalf, and much more.

Bonus: If you sign up now, you can be 1 of the 5 million people that GreenDrimes will actually send $1 to in their campaign to reduce the environmental impacts of the massive and ridiculous junk mail industry.

Quid Pro Quo:
ProQuo is an online service that lets you pick and choose which junk mailers you'd like to opt out of.

Planet Green says,

"Once you've signed up, you're presented with a smörgåsbord of places that may have your personal information on file. Mousing over an organization or list's image or logo reveals more information about the offending party. To tell an organizations to stop using your data, simply click the "Stop" button next to it, though some lists may require you to send in a written request, which you can download from ProQuo. You'll start to see a reduction in junk mail in around three weeks, says the site."

Scratch the Tree Devouring Cats:
Catalogs, that is. Catalog Choice is kind of like ProQuo, but specific to catalogs. They say that a staggering 19 Billion catalogs are mailed to American consumers each year. Sign up at Catalog Choice to help stop the madness.

Of course you can use all the catalogs that you do have to make creative wrapping paper, reducing your use of another huge tree devouring and toxic product.

What are some ways you deal with the junk mail you get...or do you just deal with it and shred it?