I came across greendimes on a friend of a friends blog. The blog describes better than I could how greendimes works:
…that for a mere $3/mo (a dime a day) will not only stop those mounds of junk mail from coming to your house, they will also plant a tree in your name for every month you subscribe.
So how do they stop they stop the junk mail? Again from the friends blog:
Well, they basically call, write, or email every organization that is responsible for sending this junk out, or for selling your name, and ask for your name to be removed. They do this initially when you first sign up, and then periodically later to new organization that your name may pop up on.
So all in all, you pay a mere $3/month for someone to keep junk mail being sent to you and to prevent your name from being sold to other companies that will send you junk mail. Not bad.
When I signed up, they had a listing of about 20 catalog companies that you could select from that you already receive and want to be removed from. At the bottom of the list, they also listed their email address so you could tell them other catalog companies you wanted to be removed from. I instantly thought of my mom cause she gets bombarded with catalogs this time of year.
This was perfect timing for me ’cause I was thinking last night about how much waste all of the political fliers in the mail were creating – especially since most people just throw them away and do not even read them.
Oh and in case you need some incentive, here are some stats from greendimes:
- 100 million trees are chopped down every year for junk mail sent to American homes.
- 28 billion (that’s 28 with 9 zeros) gallons of water are needed to make all the paper used for junk mail.
- Paper makes up a third of the 235 million tons of waste Americans send to landfills each year.
- The typical American household receives about 70 pounds of junk mail a year.
- The amount of junk mail sent grows by 3 billion pieces a year.