Americans are spammed with junk mail everyday.  We’re not talking about email spam, but those irritating junk mail that arrives in your postal mailbox almost everyday.  More than 800 pieces of junk mail are delivered to each household a year.  That’s over 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail, equivalent to the deforestation of the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. (New American Dream calculation from Conservatree and US Forest Service statistics)

Your Junk Mail Today

  • Junk mail in the US accounts for about 30% of all the mail delivered in the world.
  • 44% of junk mail goes to the landfill unopened.  The average American will spend 8 months of their lives dealing with junk mail.
  • On average, 88% of mail we receive are junk mail.  Only 12% are personal letters.
  • More than 62 billion pieces (4 million tons) of junk mail are produced each year.
  • Junk mail inks have high concentrations of heavy metals, making the paper difficult to recycle.
  • $320 million of your local tax dollars are used to dispose of junk mail each year.
  • Transporting junk mail costs $550 million a year.
  • Worse, your name and address used in bulk mailings reside in mass data-collection networks.  Your info is typically worth 3 to 20 cents each time it is sold.

But junk mail does more than invade our homes and waste our time; it also destroys our environment.

Junk mail and the environment

Junk Mail Carbon Footprint

  • The manufacture of junk mail releases more greenhouse gas emissions p er year than the emissions released by 9.4 million cars.  Check out the chart to see a quick breakdown of the carbon footprint of Junk Mail (source: donotmail.org).
  • It would take an equivalent of over 500k garbage truck loads to dump all jun k mail into landfills and incinerators each year.  That is equivalent to the length of 4861 football fields if you were to line the trucks one behind the other.
  • By the year 2010, almost 50% of the solid mass that makes up our landfills is expected to be paper and paperboard waste.
  • 6.5 million tons of discounted junk mail entered the US municipal solid waste stream in 2006.

Sad truth about junk mail efficiency

  • A response rate of less than 0.25% is considered acceptable for the 500 million US credit card solicitations that are mailed monthly.
  • A national poll by Zodgy International found that 92% of respondents discard or recycle at least some of their junk mail without reading it.

People really want a Do Not Mail Registry

Since 1991, national polls have consistently shown that between 80-90% of respondents dislike junk mail and would take some action to reduce it if they could.  In the Zogby International poll, 93% of respondents were aware of the Do Not Call Registry.  And 89% of them supported a Do Not Mail Registry to make it easier to opt out of unsolicited ad mail.

Take a look at how many people have signed up for this campaign.  For more information on the Do Not Mail campaign, you can email donotmail@forestethics.org.

What you can do

There are many ways to reduce junk mail not only to help the environment, but also to reduce your own frustrations.  In my next set of articles, I will talk about how you can reduce your junk mail.