GreenYour.com

Contacting businesses and nonprofit organizations and asking them to halt or reduce the amount of mail they send you can help minimize the amount of unsolicited mail you receive.

How to contact businesses and nonprofits you use or support

1. Call the 800-numbers in the catalogs you receive and ask that your name be removed from mailing lists. If you've never bought anything from a company, ask how it got your name so you can call that business as well.
2. Call 1-888-5-OPTOUT or visit Optoutprescreen to halt unsolicited credit card and insurance offers for five years.
3. Call nonprofit organizations you support and instruct them not to share your name with other organizations. Nonprofits rent their mailing lists to each other and this accounts for the mail you often receive from other organizations that you may not support.
4. Call 1-888-241-6760 or visit Advo to remove your name from this mass mailer of advertising circulars.
5. Visit ValPak to no longer receive mass-mailing coupons and advertisements.

Contacting businesses and nonprofits you use or support helps you go green because…

• It can reduce the amount of your unsolicited mail, saving paper and energy costs.

Signing up for the Direct Marketing Association's "do not call" list or hiring an organization to help cut the amount of junk mail you receive are both good ways to reduce your load of unsolicited mail. A better (and often cheaper) way, though, is to contact the companies you receive unwanted mail from yourself and ask them to remove you from their mailing lists. It's more time-consuming to do it yourself, but often ends up being more effective.

Every year, each adult in the United States receives nearly 560 pieces, or about 41 pounds, of unsolicited mail. That's nearly seven times the amount of personal mail received (10.8 pieces of junk mail per week versus 1.5 personal letters). Even worse, approximately 44 percent of this unsolicited mail is carted to landfills unopened, unread, and unrecycled, costing US taxpayers $320 million each year.[1]

It's estimated that 100 million trees are used annually to produce all that junk mail.[2] In addition to loss of trees, processing all that paper requires 28 billion gallons of water.[3] What's more, creating and transporting this amount of mail results in more greenhouse gas emissions than 2.8 million cars produce in a year.[1]

External links

• Federal Trade Commission - Facts for Consumers
• Global Stewards - Reducing Personal and Business Junk Mail
• eHow.com - How to get your name off mailing lists