De-junk your mailbox: It’s Part and “Parcel” of greener living!

There’s nothing that quite compares to the excitement and joy of receiving a physical piece of mail. In our increasingly technologically-based world, a physical piece of mail addressed just to us can often be a delightful, welcome addition to our day. However, receiving hordes of mass-distributed, unsolicited “junk” mail is an unwelcome and downright wasteful byproduct of today’s pernicious capitalist economy.

According to The Story of Stuff Project’s “The Story of Junk Mail,” the average American receives 40 pounds of catalogs and other unwanted junk mail every year. Over 40% of this unwanted mail goes directly to landfills without even being opened. In addition to cluttering up our homes and mailboxes, this quantity of junk mail also has a substantial environmental impact.

Every year, over 100 million trees are cut down to produce the paper used in junk mail. The process of making and distributing all that mail releases as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 9 million cars. Furthermore, the process of producing and recycling all this junk mail consumes a staggering 28 billion gallons of water, annually一and that’s just in the US.

On average, a US household receives 848 pieces of junk mail every year. The vast majority of junk mail distributed in the US comes from Direct Mail Advertising (DMA) from restaurants, car dealerships, political parties, and credit card companies. Ultimately, this unsolicited and often undesired mail stream consumes valuable resources in the form of trees and water, fills up landfills, and contributes to climate change through its links to deforestation and fossil fuel consumption. 

If you’re looking to get a handle on your junk mail situation, there are several steps your can take to fight back against unsolicited junk mail as outlined in a HuffPost article on Stopping Junk Mail for Good:

1. Stop junk mail at it’s source by enrolling in the DMA’s screening program known as DMAchoice. For $2, this program allows you to opt out of a variety of junk mail solicitations based on your personal preferences in ten year intervals.

This week, I signed up for said service, providing my name, mailing address, and email address. I entered my credit card information to pay the $2 processing fee, and was then able to choose to receive or opt out of mail offers from catalogs, magazines, and other mail offers. This included subscription offers, newsletters, periodicals, other promotional mailings, donation requests, retail promotions, cable and phone offers, bank offers, and generic mail addressed to”current resident.” For those of us who want nothing to do with any sort of promotional mail, there’s even an easy one-click option to remove your name and address from all unsolicited promotional mail, which is the option I chose.

As the site explains, it can take anywhere from 30-90 days for your updated preferences to go into effect, and you can always update and change your preferences/information (including your address) as needed.

2. The DMAchoice website also has a link to a free resource you can use to opt out of pre-screened credit offers. This resource, OptOutPrescreen.com, is offered by the major credit bureaus and allows you to opt out of receiving unsolicited offers of credit or insurance policies for five years or permanently, with the option to opt back in at any time. The process entails providing your name and address and also asks for your social security number and birthday, although the latter two pieces of personal information are not required. You can also call toll-free 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) to access this service.

3. In addition to DMAchoice and OptOutPrescreen, ceasing some junk mail may require contacting organizations directly via phone. This specifically applies to any company or organization that you’ve donated to or purchased from in the past, in which case the DMAchoice resource will not effectively remove you from their mailing list.

When I arrived home to my permanent address after two years of traveling around the country, the stack of junk mail that had accumulated on my desk was truly staggering. The main perpetrators included, ironically enough, organizations like The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the Environmental Defense Fund as well as my alma mater and numerous airlines offering me company-specific credit card deals. I set aside a few hours and subsequently called every organization, contacting their customer service department and requesting that I (my name and mailing address) be removed from their mailing list. Several months later, my junk mail stacks have significantly dwindled. I was able to find most customer service phone numbers with a quick internet search, but you can also find contact information on each company’s respective page via DMAchoice.

4. You can also utilize Catalogchoice.org, a free alternative to DMAchoice that allows you to unsubscribe from catalogs one at a time. So far, Catalog Choice has saved over 500,000 mature trees, 1.1 billion pounds of greenhouse gas, 400 million pounds of solid waste, and 3.7 billion gallons of water by enabling folks to opt out of receiving junk mail. (These savings estimates were calculated using the Environmental Paper Network’s calculator tool, which is a neat resource that is definitely worth checking out!)

5. You can also utilize additional tools to aid you in the process of unsubscribing, like the PaperKarma app which allows you to take a photo of the unwanted mailing with your smartphone and then attempts to do all the unsubscribing work for you. Oh, technology…

6. It is also worth briefly mentioning that opting in to paperless billing and correspondence for things like banking, credit card statements, and insurance policy documents can also help save a lot of resources.


Ultimately, getting your junk mail under control does take some front loading in putting in the initial time and effort to opt out of these wasteful correspondences. However, doing so will save significant quantities of trees and water, reduce the amount of materials being sent to landfills, and decrease the consumption of fossil fuels and subsequent output of greenhouse gas emissions which the junk mail industry currently contributes to. It will also help to de-clutter your life and make your mail receiving experiences more noteworthy, cherished, and sustainable.

Do you have experience tackling the pervasive junk mail complex? Are there other tips/tricks/strategies you can share? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, I wish you the best of luck on your continued journey toward greener living.

~Sam