41 pounds is the amount of junk mail the average American gets each year. And if you’re like me, I’m betting that 99% of that mail goes unopened.
41lbs.org is an especially green consumer group that promises to get you off of almost every mailing list for five years. It costs 41 bucks, and almost half of that goes directly to environmental groups - American Forests, WildWest Institute, New American Dream, and Friends of the Urban Forest.
According to the site,
To produce and process 4 million tons of junk mail a year, 100 million trees are destroyed, 28 billion gallons of water is wasted, and energy equivalent to 2.8 million cars is spent – which produces greenhouse gases and more global warming.
Sounds like that’s worth the cash, right? If not, I know I’ll just be happy to not get three dozen credit card applications every other day.
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Wow, think of the weight in paper that would be saved if everyone switched to spam instead…..Great post and food for thought. Thanks for posting.
Julia Rosien
Nomadik Editor
http://www.nomadik.com/blogs/
Casey, not suggesting that it isn’t a good cause, but you CAN stop of a lot of that yourself for free. Check out this information at the Federal Trade Commission.
I opted out of the credit card offers about 2 years ago and I rarely get one now.
Thanks for the info, Bryan!
41pounds *does* say that you can remove yourself from mailing lists on your own, but they mention it could be difficult. I’m not sure if they take you off of more lists than this, but that link you gave up sure was easy …
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