There are a staggering 4 million tons of junk mail delivered in the United States every year, amounting to over 40 lbs. per person. The most important action to take to reduce this unsolicited mail is to contact the companies that are sending it and the Direct Marketing Association, and request they take your name off their lists. Below is a sample letter - for more strategies visit Co-op America at www.coopamerica.org/programs/woodwise/consumers/whatyoucando/stopjunk.cfm

Mail Preference System

Direct Marketing Association

PO Box 643

Carmel, NY 10512

 

Dear Madams / Sirs,

Please take both of us off any mailing lists that your rent or sell immediately.  Your industry promotes extremely wasteful practices that we find highly objectionable, such as sending out masses of catalogs in the hopes that a tiny fraction of the respondents will buy the useless crap that is being offered.

We also find it disturbing that your organization can profit off our name and address without our permission; that you would charge $5 to remove our names immediately online (as opposed to writing and having to wait several months for the request to be processed for free); and that our request to be removed from your lists will only be heeded for five years.  These are all unethical practices.

We hope you will inform the mail order companies that you service that we will never do business with any company that buys your mailing lists - let alone one that sends out unsolicited junk mail - and that we will further advise friends and family to do the same.

Sincerely,

 

 

 

CC:     Your Senators

            Your Representative

            President George W. Bush