By John P. Anderson
Want to reduce the amount of trash and recycling you have each week? Reducing the amount of junk mail you receive is a good place to start. Below I’ve compiled a convenient list of the websites and companies you should contact to most effectively reduce the junk mail you received.
Here are a few figures from a post by NYU Law School that highlight the environmental impact of junk mail:
- 5.6 million tons of catalogs and other direct mail advertisements end up in U.S. landfills annually
- The average American household receives 848 pieces of junk mail per household, equal to 1.5 trees every year – more than 100 million trees for all U.S. households combined.
- 100 million trees a year is the equivalent of deforesting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every four months.
- Largely due to deforestation, junk mail manufacturing creates as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 3.7 million cars.
Similar to the Do Not Call Registry to stop telemarketers and others from harassing you by phone there are similar services available to handle junk mail, although none are as comprehensive as the Do Not Call Registry is for calls. The following are the sites for the largest opt-out services. The below requests will take less than 20 minutes to complete and greatly reduce the amount of junk mail you receive. Please note that it will likely take a few weeks for the services to process your requests and stop sending mail your way.
- Direct Marketing Association (Mass Mailing Industry Group)
- Opt-Out Prescreen (Credit Card Offers and Credit Rating Agencies)
- This is a 5-year opt out – if you’d like to opt out permanently you can print the completed 5-year form and mail in a signed copy. The site makes this very easy to do.
- Yellow Pages – Highly recommend signing up for this one since phone books are massive. When I opted out on this site I was surprised to find my address is serviced by 7(!) separate yellow book companies.
In San Diego there are a few more companies that are likely sending junk mail your way. Opt out via the following methods.
- U-T San Diego – Even if you’re not a subscriber to the local newspaper you likely find advertisements delivered to your driveway occasionally. The U-T does not have an online opt-out per my conversation with a representative but you can opt-out by calling 800-533-8830 (then Option 6 to be connected to a person) and requesting to be removed from all mailing lists. This includes enlace (Spanish newspaper), San Diego Extra, and Local Community Values (advertisement mailings).
- Red Plum – The thick coupon and advertisement mailings that arrive weekly to many homes in San Diego.
- Pennysaver – Another weekly advertisement mailing that includes many classified-type ads.
Opting out via the above links will address most of your junk mail. For specific companies / mailings in the future Catalog Choice is a good tool to manage unwanted catalogs and mail. Catalog Choice assists with opt-out requests for specific companies that send you mail (Cox, Home Depot, etc.) that may not fall into the above categories and be covered by a general opt-out request. Catalog Choice also offers a fee service, MailStop Shield, that can be purchased for $35 a year to stop junk mail.
41pounds.org is another pay service for junk mail reduction. This service costs $41 and they will remove you from a host of mass marketers, and manage your junk mail for 5 years. Additionally, a third of your payment goes to environmental non-profits and public works. I haven’t used this service but have heard good things. The name is for the average of 41 pounds of junk mail received per adult American per year.
Reducing the junk mail you receive will help to reduce the amount of trees harvested to produce the mail and the resources expended to process the waste stream created when disposed of.
John P. Anderson
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Great article, John P. Anderson. When I’ve forgotten to
check my mailbox for a day I find it on the following day
exploding with the Pennysaver, mattress four-colors,
offers for oil change and tune-ups and the rest of the
unworthies. Who uses this stuff?
I’ve desktopped this article and I’m gonna get down to
cancelling the stuff, thanks to your sleuthing as to how.
Thanks Bob. The opt-outs are for the most part really quick and well organized. The biggest exception is the U-T mailings that don’t come in the mailbox but on the driveway. No online opt-out and no direct phone to call. Maybe those items count for circulation numbers? (I actually wouldn’t doubt it with the enlace publication)
Important information, John. As consumers we all need to do this. It would sure help.
John, the link to Direct Marketing Association doesn’t work.
I fixed it.
Thanks Doug and thanks John for pointing out the error.
I opted out from junk mail at the Direct Marketing Association and from catalogs at Catalog Choice a number of years ago; it has worked extremely well.
I’ve now used the links in the article to opt out from Red Plum and Pennysaver. Those packets always go straight from my mailbox to the recycling bin.
No point in opting out from the UT junk advertising in the driveway because it’s not delivered within my condo complex. However, I see the UT packet in a plastic wrap in too many driveways around town, never picked up and basically degrading in the sun. This is litter and should not be allowed. This is also true for certain community newspapers that are thrown into driveways and often sit there turning yellow then brown in the sun until someone finally picks it up and throws it away, I hope at least in a bin for recycling. The community newspapers are available for pickup in many locations as is the SDReader, CityBeat and a few other freebies.
Judy – thanks for the thoughts and glad Catalog Choice has been effective for you – I hope the other services noted in this article prove helpful as well. (They have all worked well for me with the exception of Pennysaver, which took a few tries. However, they were in the process of adding / updating their online opt-out at the time so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.)
The U-T adverts specifically bother me for the plastic wrap you mention. Paper will degrade over time but far too many of those plastic wraps are destined for our oceans, parks, and other areas when they blow in the wind.
Thanks John! Awesome tips and only took about 10 minutes. The problem of too much junk mail has been bothering me for a while, but I guess I was too lazy to seek out the answers for myself!
Andy – glad you enjoyed and that it wasn’t too bad completing the opt-outs. Pass along to others if you’d like, there’s plenty of junk mail to go around. Thanks for reading!
I’ve been a rural letter carrier for 40 years here in Humboldt County, and my wife was a rural letter carrier for 30 years. We’ve seen all the “stuff” companies send through the mail. There are ways to opt-out of the mailings, like Valassis/Red Plum. And I have about a dozen and a half who have done so on my route. Not many compared to the 650 customers I have. But a reduction in my mail volume means a reduction in my salary, right across the board.
The real problem is the mailing discounts the massive mailers get, which the postal service has given them, to flood mail boxes with “junk” mail. This has resulted in people getting huge amounts of mail from unsolicited sources. And the mailers send it out at something like 9 cents per piece.
Tom – thanks for your thoughts and perspective. I agree that discounted rates for mass mailings contribute to the amount of junk mail sent out, and believe discount programs for mass mailings have been emphasized by USPS in recent years to increase revenue. Given your long history with USPS have you seen a change in the quantity of catalogs, advertisements, etc. over the years?
Also thanks for mentioning you’re writing from Humboldt County – beautiful country there and have been thinking of the scenery all morning after reading your comment.
It troubles me that the USPS is somewhat responsible for this increasing problem. Many may not agree or want to do so, but the USPS set up the Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) program which provide low-cost advertisement to your local businesses, at all of our expense. The USPS motivation is to increase revenues to cope with their ever-increasing operational costs. However, this places the burden on all of us as well as the environment. If you ask the USPS to stop delivering the EDDM junk mail, they tell you they are obligated by law to deliver the mail, yet the USPS set up the program. WITHOUT giving residents an easy way to opt-out. Clearly the USPS has a conflict of interest and is therefore not motivated to make it easy for residents to Opt-Out.
If anyone has information on how to end the cycle, please share.
Well put and certainly seems a conflict of interest (at least between profits and the environment, in this case).
John, this is awesome. I had previously found the Opt-out phone for the UT and after a number of calls it looks like they have stopped (but you have to be persistent). I thought I was doomed on the rest of the stuff that comes in the mail until I saw this article. I have done it all, quick and easy. May our landfills enjoy less burden, at least from junk sent to my address. Thanks!!!
Kevin – thanks for the kind words and I’m glad you enjoyed the article. I’ve been using CatalogChoice (and PaperKarma) for the past few months to stop the few remaining pieces of junk mail and have really enjoyed CatalogChoice – does a nice job of tracking requests. Just fyi in case you have some stragglers too.
I will say one good thing about those stupid UT ad packets. I was out walking my dog one day. He did his business as dogs will do … I reached for my roll of doggie doo bags (as a good pet owner will do) and discovered it was empty! Oh no! What to do!?!?! Thankfully I remembered those ad supplements! I walked a couple of houses down until I found one, removed the “crap” that comes in the bag and used it to scoop up the crap left by my dog … the bags are designed for crap and handle it well :-) Neighborhood disaster and embarrassment averted! (totally not worth the litter, but just wanted to point out the ONLY used I have seen for those crap bags!)