Every year, each adult in the United States receives nearly 560 pieces, or about 41 pounds, of junk mail. That's over 80 lbs for each 2-adult household! It is estimated that 100 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are used to produce all of this mail. And if you're like me, you end up throwing most of it in the trash (sometimes shredding the credit card offers first).
So how to get rid of it? I came across an excellent website this week called GreenDimes that helps you eliminate up to 90% of your junk mail. And they plant a tree for each person that signs up (or they pay you a dollar...my advice - pick the tree). You can eliminate your unwanted catalogs, opt out of credit card offers, stop receiving Val-Pak and lots of other direct marketing mail. Sweet! They do warn that it often takes a couple months for the junk mail to truly disappear, since things may already be in the mail right now. I signed up a couple days ago and haven't seen any junk since then, although it probably hasn't fully kicked in yet.
Another way to reduce your mail (and save postage!) is to pay bills online. We already do this, but most companies continue sending paper statements for our records anyway. So this week I will request that these be stopped by sending my bank, credit card, and student loan companies written requests to cancel paper statements. It will save them paper and postage, too.
Also, check to see if your curbside recycling program accepts junk mail. I always assumed that ours didn't (because how can you recycle it really?), but I just now checked on the Coralville website, and they DO - they even take the envelopes with the little plastic windows! So starting this week we will co-mingle our junk mail (that's recycle speak for "mix it all together") with the rest of the recycling.
See the update for Crunchy Challenge No. 4: Use fewer paper towels here. Look for an exciting post on the annual Wymore family reunion soon!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
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5 comments:
I've done the junk mail thing and it is wonderful. Also, some bills that you pay online also have where you can request online that they e-mail you a statement instead. I would check that before writing letters (unless you already did). I have a few that allowed me to do it right online (save postage and paper with that too!) Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?
I know, the internet is awesome. And yes, most of our services accept online stop requests.
I hate all the extra mail we get, and getting rid of it is so easy - I wish I would have done this years ago.
The curbside recycling people actually took our junk mail!! Not sure why I'm so excited about that, but I am!
Madison and the surrounding areas seem to claim that they are "The Recycling Leaders" (there's even a sign that says that nearby), but we can only recycle plastics that are 1s or 2s. Iowa City and Coralville are clearly far superior when it comes to what you can recycle!
iowa city recycling used to be like that (plastics 1 and 2 only) about 5 years ago. then at some point it extended to "everything except 6". coralville even takes 6s. yeah, it is nice around here... on that note, i am gonna have a[nother] beer. ;)
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