War On Junk Mail
I’ve decided to declare war on junk mail. I’m trying to reduce my environmental footprint, and therefore, trying to reduce the amount of waste that I produce. I realized that a good portion of the garbage I create is junk mail that I throw away. I’d always thought that it was futile to try to stop all of the junk mail, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to make a concerted effort to track down the companies sending me this crap, and get them to stop. I’ve included some great resources that I’ve used in my war. I encourage everyone to declare war on junk mail. It’s really not that difficult.
ADVO . They send all those stupid coupon books (Shopwise) that you never use along with the pictures of the missing children that you will never find. Note: The postal carrier may not stop putting the coupon book in the mail box, so I had to call ADVO, who then called the post office to make sure the carrier did not put one in my box.
Valpak coupons More coupons you will never use.
Do-it-yourself: Stop junk mail, email and phone calls
OptOutPrescreen Opt-Out of lists supplied by Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion for firm offers of credit or insurance.
Direct Marketing Association They claim their opt-out list is good for five years.
Junk Busters Great resources on removing your name from mailing, telemarketing and spam.
Dell Opt out of mail and email.
Crutchfield: Send an email to service@crutchfield.com or call them at : 1-800-955-9091 and ask to stop receiving their catalog.
Nelson Publications - 1414-313-8808 Call them and tell them to take you off their mailing list. They send out coupons for Milwaukee area businesses.
Besides these links, you can also call the companies sending you all of the catalogs you never read. I also called my own credit card company, Chase, and asked them to stop sending me mail. Not only is it an environmental issue, it’s a privacy issue. How easy is it for someone to intercept something from your credit card company, especially all of the those stupid “convenience” checks?
Also, for those of you in Milwaukee, I called the Journal Sentinel (414-224-2000), and they removed me from their lists, so I won’t receive all of those coupons that I never use.
January 4th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Hello.
Bravo! I too am exhausted by all the junk mail that is legally deposited in our federally owned mail boxes with no return addresses yet to the attention “Current Resident”. I am an avid recycler of which ~ 35% is from USPS junk mail I have NO control over.
ATTENTION ALL…join me in the battle against our federal government by returning the unwanted, unstoppable, unrefusable junk mail delivered by our US Postal Man (poor sucker) by collecting the junk mail & depositing it back into USPS blue mailing bins. Perhaps if the Postal Man is overwhelmed with sorting through returned junk mail, the federal government will think twice about using this as a source of financial support & just increase the cost of postage.
I’ll gladly pay it!
USPOS Junk Mail Returner
January 6th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Well, I’m not ready to go to the extreme of junk-mailing the postal carriers–the saying “don’t shoot the messenger” definitely applies in my approach to this problem, and that’ll probably just drive up the cost of mail service without eliminating junk-mailers, just compounding the problem.
My biggest problem is credit card applications, though I’ve dramatically improved it with a simple e-mail. Capitol One (the “what’s in your wallet” people with the crazzy medieval pillagers in their T.V. spots) was sending me at times 10 apps. a month!! I e-mailed them at an address in one of the apps. and they got back to me promptly and said they’d take me off their list, and have been true to their word. So, use the mighty, paper-free World Wide Web and you can fight off unwanted snail-mail on your own terms.