A Single Step — Reducing Junk Mail
Some days I feel like I stagger under the amount of mail I drag into the house. Perhaps once a month I get a personal letter. A few times a week I get a bill. I subscribe to a few magazines. But the largest portion of my mail is what we call “junk” (and for good reason).
I’m quite good at recycling it before the junk ends up in a pile to be dealt with a second or third time. But there are techniques for keeping the stuff from being sent in the first place. Â
Reducing incoming mail doesn’t affect my financial bottom line, at least directly. But if many people work at getting less mail sent to their household, the demand will be less, requiring less paper to be ordered, less ink to be used up, and less gas expended to transport it all. This all sounds like a Good Thing to me.
This site — http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/ – has some great tips for reducing the amount of unwanted mail that you get. Unfortunately, each step mentioned sounds like it reduces only a portion of the incoming mail. (Getting rid of unwanted phone calls seems far easier by comparison.)
One step that I already take is to ask that my name and address not be given to other organizations. I do this when I make a donation, when I order from a company, when I’m on the phone and am asked for this information. From reading the “obviously” page, it looks like my next most effective step is to write to the Direct Mail Association.
Short of never donating money, never buying items online, and never owning a credit card, Â what are your thoughts for disinviting junk mail from gracing your household?
on April 30th, 2007 at 7:02 am
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.â€
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.â€
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
on April 30th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
One thing to note is that when you go to a store and the cashier asks for your phone number, this isn’t so that the store can call you up and ask how things are going. They use your phone number to find your address and add it to their mailing list. You can avoid junk mail by declining to give your phone number.
on May 1st, 2007 at 4:33 pm
We are often asked for personal information that is not strictly necessary to a given transaction. I typically give my zip code when asked, but not my telephone number. Be cautious about filling out warranty cards — those are usually a marketing ploy for gathering personal information about you.
And you know those supermarket “discount tags”? Think of all your buying habits that are carefully keyed to your name, address, phone number, birthday, and salary. Ick. At a party a while back, a group of friends and I exchanged as many of those tags as we had. I now shop on behalf of a gay man living on the North Shore, and I’ve never been asked why I typically shop 50 miles from home.
I once met a private eye who said that she had no problem asking for — and getting — personal information from people. She’d call up a neighbor of a person she was following, for example, and ask if the person would answer some questions in return for a pizza. She said it was amazing how much people would say in exchange for free food. She was apparently very successful at her job.
We are so used to giving out information, but I assume the information that I give (freely or not) can, or more likely will, be used against me. At its most benign, it all comes back in the form of unwanted phone calls or unwanted paper mail.
And btw, I agree with Ramsey that we need a “Do Not Mail” law to parallel our “Do Not Call” law.
– liz
on May 2nd, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Try checking out www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist .
Evidently any mass mailers associated with the Direct Mailing Association compare their mailings lists to the “off mailing list” requests.
on May 4th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Some very nice responses to this posting. Thank you, Sis. I should mention that as part of researching this post, I ended up signing up for the Direct Mailing Assn’s “Do not mail” list. They ask you to pay a dollar for processing. If it works, it’s well worth it, probably in the first week the DNM order takes effect.
– liz
on May 9th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Ecocycle has a list of actions you can take to stop junk mail. I also read that you can call 1-888-5-OPTOUT to get off the lists the credit reporting agencies sell.