Bottom Line: City governments make it easy for residents and businesses to stop the flow of junk mail to our mailboxes.
Junk Mail is a big problem. We all get it, and 9 times out of 10, that piece of junk mail goes right to the recycle bin. Every year about 42 billion pieces of unsolicited mail are sent to unwilling recipients in the US. This plethora of unwanted mail has immense costs. It robs our forests of over 100 million trees every year. Then it costs us $320 million annually nationwide to dispose of it all. According to San Francisco Department of the Environment’s calculations, it costs each American about 234 minutes a year to sort through the junk.
In an effort to reduce the amount of waste generated in the form of junk mail, a coalition of more than 110 Bay Area cities, counties, and businesses has launched the “Stop Junk Mail” campaign. This year, the campaign will be launched exclusively online in an effort to further reduce paper use. The heart of the campaign is the on-line “Stop Junk Mail Kit.” It takes less than 5 minutes and can save years of hassle and aggravation, not to mention a huge amount of wasted paper.
The kit offers residents and businesses a simple solution to reducing unsolicited mail with online forms and ready-to-send letters to organizations designed to protect consumer privacy. The kit will remove your name from junk mail clearinghouses, credit card companies, and the like. It offers options to choose to stop only some types of mail or to opt out of the whole mess.
Take Action:
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http://www.stopjunkmail.org/
