Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Cutting back on catalogs and junk mail

It truly drives me to distraction to receive piles of catalogs from companies.Well, except for Victoria's Secret. No, no, just kidding. Seriously.


What an incredible waste and pollution, what a terrible use of precious resources (human, petroleum and more), to print and deliver millions of catalogs that are just then thrown away or perhaps recycled. I won't even get into how the U.S. Postal Service both benefits and is financially hurt by the deep discounts offered to mailers of this junk.


So that's why today I visit dmachoice.org, the website of the Direct Marketing Association, registered and then took advantage of the ability to turn off delivery of catalogs, magazines and other materials that members of the DMA might send out.


It won't stop all the junk mail, but it sure won't hurt. I encourage you to do the same.

2 comments:

Mike said...

I Completely agree. Thankfully we don't get so much junk mail any more after moving house....just the odd local tradesman looking for business or Pizza Hut trying to convince me they are a healthy alternative just because they have a picture of a bowl of pasta and salad.

But it's not just junk mail, for example banks, insurance, utility companies.

My wife and I switched to "paperless" billing and correspondence for all our financial and utility services after being shocked at the amount of paper we discovered (and subsequently had to shred before recycling) when we were moving house.

Thankfully our monthly post now mainly consists of my wife's medical journal, some of our charity correspondence and some post addressed to the previous occupant.....which is a pity as it's come all the way from the USA and we need to send it all the way back as the previous occupant now lives in the US again!!!!

I even went to the trouble of finding insurance suppliers that give a discount for choosing not to have any documents sent out. Instead it's all online :-)

However all of this has created one problem in the UK though. Most organisations require 2 recent documents as proof of identity such as a bank statement or utility bill. I am loath to print out 2 documents that will be thrown away the next day however in most cases i have no choice and my son gets some utility bills to draw on the next day.

I can't understand why a paperless, electronic identity authentication system solution has not been developed yet.

Kea said...

I have to admit I still receive the Oracle magazine in print - because the bathroom is the only place I can read it without disruption :-)