Saintless

According to DoNotMail.org, we average about 8 months out of our lives opening junk mail, and that’s not counting the stuff we throw away unopened.

I am going to give their service a try, and hopefully that will save a few trees. But, I’m also for a National Do Not Mail Registry list.

Local post office officials declined to comment directly on the registry, but did say a decrease in deliverable junk mail would have a negative impact on the postal service, since the majority of the mail the post office handles is what people term “junk mail.”

According to the Washington Post, our United States Postal Service has come out against the idea:

The agency has printed 3,000 “information packets” about the economic value of standard mail, with specific data for each of the 18 states that have considered a Do Not Mail Registry. It has dispatched postmasters to testify before legislative committees around the country.

“The Postal Service has come in and clobbered legislators,” said Todd Paglia, executive director of ForestEthics, an environmental group that has collected 289,000 signatures on an online petition to Congress that calls for a National Do Not Mail Registry. “It’s really a people-versus-special interest kind of battle.”

I’m sure that many mega-corporations find the idea harmful. But, that’s their problem. If they can’t come into the modern age where wasting resources is bad, and all things digital are good, the businesses deserve to go the way of the dodo bird.

It looks like there are a lot of resources online to try to rid yourself of junk mail, but since none of them appear to be all-inclusive, a person might waste 7 of the 8 months they’re trying to save! I like the idea of a voluntary do not mail registry.