Help – I’m Drowning In Junk Mail

By Dannie McIntire

City-County Observer Feature Writer 

I don’t know about you, but one of my biggest pet peeves is the volume of junk mail I receive on a weekly basis. I have a paper shredder sitting on a file cabinet in a closet, in front of it I stack each day’s arrival of new junk mail. When the new junk mail begins sliding off the stack it’s time to take out the shredder, plug it in, and begin the annoying task of shredding the unwanted collection. I shred all the junk mail I receive as a security measure, trying to protect myself against any sensitive information it may contain. As my shredder can only handle a certain thickness, it forces me to finally open a lot of my junk mail just for the honor of shredding it, bagging it, and taking it out to my trash can.

I’m amazed at the number of pieces of junk mail I receive for hearing aids alone. Now my wife may think I sometimes need a hearing aid and she may have put me on that particular mailing list, but I think that malady may be more a selective hearing problem that many of us husbands suffer from.

Don’t even get me started on pre-approved credit card offers I receive on a weekly basis. If I accepted all the pre-approved credit card offers I receive in a year’s time I could probably use them to pay off the National Debt. Not a bad idea, maybe the government would then bail me out financially with stimulus money. No wait, that’s even more borrowed money, bad idea! 

Another “favorite” of mine to receive are the numerous offers to enjoy a “free steak dinner” in return for listening to an investment advisor pitch. I could go to several of these a month and lower my monthly grocery bill if the current cost of gasoline didn’t negate the savings. I do wonder how many of these junk mailings are successful in recruiting the advisor a new client. Now, this is merely my opinion, but if a steak dinner can convince you to turn over your life savings to a stranger you may need to adjust your investing strategy.   

America has over time become a “throw-away” society, often driven by economics. It can be cheaper to throw away an article and buy a replacement than to have it repaired. That makes sense. But I have to ask, does the volume of junk mail delivered annually make economic and environmental sense?  I’m sure for the companies and their employees involved in the production and delivery of junk mail it does. To be fair, an important plus side of “junk mail” is it does create jobs, including the US Postal Service which generated $16.36 million in revenue on mail marketing in 2019.

But there are some other facts that should be considered. According to web site “unjunkmail.com”, annual junk mail in the United States resulted in the following statistics:

• In 2005 the US Postal Service delivered over 100 Billion (100,000,000) pieces of “junk mail”.
• On average, each one of the US Postal Service’s 300,000 letter carriers delivered 20 tons of bulk mail each year, the weight of four elephants. (Now that should make you think oh my aching back).
• In 2005 “unjunkmail.com” estimated that the typical response to “junk mail” was approximately 2 percent, leaving the remaining 98 percent of “junk mail” as a waste going into our landfills if not recycled. Over 2/3 of all junk mail is not recycled, often because of the composition of the junk mail inks and fibers. 
• In 2005 the Unites States handled approximately 41 percent of the world’s junk mail that year. 
• More than 100 million trees’ worth of junk mail arrives in American mailboxes each year—the equivalent of deforesting the Rocky Mountain National Forest 4 times per year.
• The destruction of approximately 24 trees is required to make a single ton of paper.
• One tree alone absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide, preventing its emission into the atmosphere-multiple that by the above 100 million trees that were cut down.
• Some 28 billion gallons of freshwater are needed to produce the annual crop of junk mail. We have areas within the United States that are experiencing a shortage of water.
• Junk mail creates 2.1 million tons more solid waste yearly than all bathroom tissue and paper products combined.
• Over $320 million of taxpayer dollars are spent annually just to dispose of junk mail. Now that’s a lot of tax dollars to dispose of something the majority of us never asked for..  
• Many industrial nations have had anti-junk mail regulations in place for years to reduce unwanted mail, reducing its associated cost, waste, and impact on the environment. 

Now, some additional facts for our environmentalists. The production of junk mail generates more than 51 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, which is the equivalent of 9 million passenger cars. The pulp and paper industry is the third-largest polluting industry in North America and a major contributor to global warming. Where is the concern from the New Green Deal folks on that? Maybe it was in a piece of junk mail I didn’t open!

I myself honestly can’t remember the last time I purchased anything, material or service, from a junk mail mailing. Now I will admit I do sometimes cringe when my wife receives the latest LTD catalog, but then per postal regulations, it is illegal to intercept another person’s mail.  

If like me you receive more junk mail than you like, try researching the internet for websites that allow you to opt-out of receiving various types of junk mail. However, in doing research for this article, to my dismay, I learned that the US Postal Service has a service called “Saturation Mailing”, where the Post Office helps bulk mailers send mail to every address in an area and there is no way the postal service will allow you to be removed from this list. I think it is all part of an evil plot to aggravate me.