Do you just pitch your junk mail?

Well - at the very least I hope you recycle it?

There is more - much more - that you could be doing.



The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat 250,000 homes.  That's significant.  It's unfortunate.  You could do something about it.  Here are your options:

Write to: Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, 11 W 42nd St. PO Box 3861, NY, NY 10163-3861. They will stop your name from being sold to mailing list companies and reduce your junk mail up to 75%.

If you decide that you don't want to receive prescreened offers of credit and insurance, you may begin the permanent Opt-Out process online at www.optoutprescreen.com. To complete your request, you must return the signed Permanent Opt-Out Election form, which will be provided after you initiate your online request.

The Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Mail Preference Service (MPS) lets you opt out of receiving unsolicited commercial mail from many national companies for five years.

You can also opt out of catalogs, phone books, circulars, whatever you choose, through this site.  You have to manually enter specific ones here, however.



If you receive unwanted catalogs, you can simply call or email them and ask to be removed from their mailing list.

And, a little trick I learned that has worked like a charm?  Whenever you get those credit card offers and mass marketing mailings that include a prepaid envelope inside, cram everything included within the packet, even the torn open envelope addressed to you, inside of that prepaid envelope and drop it back in the mail.  I had to do this for a good six months, but then something amazing happened...  those companies decided they were tired of paying postage twice for me and getting nothing out of me, and quit sending me junk mail!!!

Good luck!  After this you should be well on your way to reducing your impact through the amount of junk mail you receive!