Quick, Easy Ways to Reduce Junk Mail
[image via Vards Uzvards]
Americans receive the equivalent of over 100 million trees in the form of junk mail every single year. Most of these catalogues and offers that show up in our mailboxes don’t even warrant a second glance. They go straight into the trash or the recycle bin and on to the waste stream. Junk mail wastes our time and our resources.
The U.K.’s Royal Mail offers a door-to-door opt out system. Folks can just fill out a simple form requesting that mail carriers not leave bulk mailings in their boxes. In the U.S., we aren’t that lucky. There are a few things you can do, though, to slow down the needless flow of waste into your mailbox.
- Catalogue Choice - You can register with this online service which allows you to opt out of various companies’ catalogues. They contact the businesses and manage the opting-out for you. The downside is that it can take up to 10 weeks for companies to receive your request.
- The Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service - Here, you can remove your name from organizations’ mailing lists as well as remove your name from their member prospectus list.
- Green Dimes - This service offers free and premium tiers. The premium option comes with some additional perks, such as monthly monitoring, but the free version looks pretty comprehensive.
- Opt Out Prescreen - The major credit companies now offer you an opt-out solution. Register here to stop receiving unsolicited “pre-approved” credit card offers.
Apart from online services, there are some steps you can take to keep your junk mail at a minimum. A lot of the time, a good place to start is the company itself. Whenever you fill out a warranty card, make a donation, or place an order for goods or services, there is a chance that company will sell your contact information. You can ask them to mark your account so that your name is not traded or sold to other companies, though it’s tough to be sure that they will comply.
A friend of mine back in college had a great trick for figuring out who was selling his information. Any time he subscribed to a magazine or made an online purchase, he used a different middle name or initial. He could then go back to the company that gave out his information and request that they keep his name and home address private.
Unfortunately, it seems almost impossible to completely stop junk mail from hitting your box. Better than tossing it in the recycling bin, why not upcycle all of that unwanted paper into art? Shredded junk mail is also excellent for padding a box containing a fragile gift. What else can you do to extend the life of your junk mail?
I happen to be one of the owners of MyJunkTree and as a new company I search the web to see if we are getting any visibility out there and I post n relevant Blogs.
We launched the company because we were tired of all the junk mail we were receiving and we personally did not want to bounce all over the web to contact all the different companies to stop it all. First and foremost we wanted to let people choose what they wanted to let come to their home knowing that some people really do like some of the coupons and catalogs. So our clients choose what they want stopped.
We also had to provide a service that is different than the other services out there, so here is what we offer:
1. We have a database of over 1300 catalogs that you can choose to stop.
2. We have over a 5700 charities/Non-Profits that you can stop solicitations from.
3. Stop the delivery of the national phone directories.
4. Stop the delivery of the weekly coupons.
5. Stop the general credit card offers as well as the ones from your own major bank.
6. Stop the miscellaneous junk mail from the data brokers.
7. You can register on the National Do Not Call Registry from the website.
8. You can order your no strings attached free annual credit report right from the website.
9. We plant trees with every new membership.
And, yes we are a paid service and yes you can do everything that we do for free, if you want to do all the research and spend the time contacting the companies yourself it can easily be done. We have just done all of the legwork for our clients and feel there is value in the service we provide. So check out MyJunkTree and make difference in your mailbox.