Five ways to stop junk mail

Summer’s afterglow is barely gone, but retailers are poised to unleash their steady onslaught of holiday catalogs. If you don’t want your mailbox to bulge with glossy catalogs and other annoying junk mail, read on.

1. Cut the catalogs you receive with Catalog Choice if catalogs are your bugaboo. More than a million people use this free online service which is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center. I’m a member and I find it quite easy to use. Also, the site now has a bunch of e-catalogs you can peruse.

2. DIY if you have the time and like the feeling of accomplishment you’ll experience after making a round of calls to companies whose mailing lists you don’t want to be on anymore.

3. Go to the source by signing on with the Direct Marketer’s Association’s mail preference service. The DMA represents oodles of businesses. For $1 a year DMAchoice allows you to sift through credit, catalog, magazine, and other mail offers and decide what you don’t want. The DMA will keep you off those mailing lists for five years. It claims to have stopped 930 million pieces of direct mail from being sent in the United States last year alone.

4. Take your pick of a variety of companies that do the work for you to stop junk mail of all sorts from darkening your doorstep.

MailStopper (formerly GreenDimes) helps you shed unwanted catalogs and junk mail for $20 a year. Once you join, it plants five trees on your behalf.

41 Pounds, named so because it says the average adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail per year, helps you get rid of 80% to 95% of yours. It will charge $41 for five years, but it donates more than 1/3 of your fee to the environmental or community organization of your choice.

Stop the Junk Mail promises to rid you of 90% of your junk mail for $19.95 per year. It plants a tree for every person who joins.

5. Make a preemptive strike by turning down sweepstakes applications, customer surveys plus warranty cards, and product registrations. Because once you give these places your name and address … you know what they may be sending you.

So choose well and get busy. You’ll help reduce the number of trees felled, energy consumed, carbon emissions, and all the other eco-costs associated with printing, mailing then disposing of junk mail. And remember to recycle the tiny amount of junk mail that does come your way.