Stop junk mail

Companies are hungry for your business and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it. The result is a relentless amount of advertisements and flyers, and if you’re like me, these (mostly) go directly to the recycle bin. Sure, I bought some pillows from you a year ago, but our relationship is over. And no, I’m not interested in your credit card offer. The issue proliferates when companies buy and sell mailing lists—a common practice in the marketing world.

Junk mail isn’t just annoying. It’s bad for the environment:

• In 2021, the USPS sent an estimated 130 billion pieces of junk mail—equivalent to 100 million trees used for production

• Largely due to deforestation, junk mail manufacturing creates as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 3.7 million cars

• Deforestation for junk mail is equivalent to deforesting all of Rocky Mountain National Park every four months

• 5.6 million tons of catalogs and other direct mail advertisements end up in U.S. landfills annually

• 44 percent of junk mail is thrown away unopened, but only half is recycled

If you're inspired by these numbers, here are some tactics you can use to reduce the amount of these unwanted mailings:

• Contact the company directly: Visit the company website to see if they have an option to unsubscribe. Sometimes you’ll need to contact customer service with your request. Note that most companies don’t make this option easily discoverable.

• Submit a request through an online service:

  • CatalogChoice.org: Enter the name of the company for your opt-out request, and they’ll submit the request on your behalf.

  • DMAChoice.org: Enter up to five records per household for a fee of $4 for a 10-year period. (It makes me a little bit angry to pay for something I didn't want in the first place.)

  • OptOutPrescreen.com: Opt out of credit and insurance offers from companies who purchase mailing lists from major consumer credit reporting bureaus (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion). Note that you must provide a social security number with these requests, and you can opt out either permanently or for five years.

  • Epsilon: Send a request to optout@epsilon.con to be removed from their marketing database and include your name and mailing address. Note that Epsilon is a marketing company that maintains a database used for nearly all product catalogs, and your request will apply to all of them.

It’s a little bit of work but the self-righteousness you’ll feel afterward will be worth it.