I despise waste.
When I was thirteen, I had a raspberry-red Woodstock ‘94 t-shirt and a math teacher who took to calling me “Earthy” because of said shirt. He never collected our homework; just quizzed us at random on it in class. So, I did something I considered perfectly sensible: if an assignment didn’t take up an entire page on both sides (and it never did), I would simply do each assignment below the previous day’s, usually fitting three or four days’ assignments on a single sheet of paper. Why not cut your paper consumption if you can?
After several months of using very little paper on my math homework, he happened to walk past my desk and noticed two days’ worth of equations on the sheet in front of me. He asked me if I was running out of paper. I said no, I just don’t like wasting perfectly good paper. He didn’t like that (who knows why…like I said, he never actually collected them), but I stood my ground. (And, of course, dutifully put my old homework in the recycling bin at the end of the semester.)
One of my pet peeves, as a busy human being and as a longtime environmentalist, is junk mail.
Everyone knows junk mail is a nuisance, but not everyone realizes it’s also an insult. Sending someone junk mail implies that they have nothing better to do than read unsolicited “newsletters”, flyers, messy piles of ads for stores they never visit, and solicitations from charities that waste more money on advertising than they actually spend on their cause. Never mind that most people only have so much time to tangle with a shredder destroying all those unwanted sheets of paper with their personal information on it. (In my case, this is an especially unpleasant activity. My shredder is 8 years old, jams constantly, doesn’t always stop whirring when I’m done shredding, and makes more noise than a lawnmower…and I can’t bring myself to toss it until it actually dies. That would be wasteful.) Worst of all, junk mail is extremely wasteful. The average American household is sent over 20 pounds of junk mail per year. That’s 20 pounds of paper and ink that would be better used for serious purposes – printing books, perhaps? (Side note: once, when I was 15, my family received a whopping TWENTY-NINE large, heavy Christmas catalogs in ONE day. Fortunately, our postman was nice enough to leave them on our porch instead of making us pick them up at the post office.)
I am not now, nor will I ever be, mollified by junk mail printed on recycled paper. It is still junk. I still don’t want it. That recycled paper should go to better uses than unwanted flyers and coupons most people, even in the current economy, simply throw away or toss in the recycling bin. (I’m looking at YOU, Fresh & Easy. Leave me and my mailbox alone!)
I moved into my current bachelorette pad a few months shy of five years ago, and getting the mail has, for most of that time, been a nightmare. The mailboxes in my complex are not much bigger than a water bottle, so even ONE unwanted piece of mail can overstuff them. Not good when you are expecting real mail and don’t want to toss it by mistake.
My mailbox was constantly jammed with mail addressed to at least five different families who had lived in the space before I did. I explained to my letter carrier that the previous occupants had moved, but their mail still kept coming. After sending several letters of complaint to the postmaster, most of it dried up, but I still got mail addressed to “[Previous Occupant] Or Current Resident”. Why do junk mailers think this is acceptable? I realize they’re greedy (and lazy), but it’s 2008. If I am looking for a particular service or product, I am not going to select it based on an unsolicited form letter. On the contrary, those things turn me OFF. So, I had to call up Guitar Center and discontinue the ads sent to Miss Nelson* Or Current Resident. I had to call the Orange County Register and put a stop to the letters addressed to Mr. Olson Or Current Resident. I even had to dash off a note to the Ocean View school district to let them know that the Wilson family hadn’t lived at my address in years and they might want to question young Cindy Wilson (whose really bad report cards I was receiving) more closely about her current address.
While I was doing battle with various entities concerning mail intended for prior residents, I also took on other junk mailers. I registered with the Direct Marketing Association to put a stop to things like credit card offers. I tracked down and wrote to various junk mailers like ADVO requesting removal from their lists (I dug up addresses with a moderate amount of effort, but had a very hard time with phone numbers). Still, it only goes so far. After three letters were ignored, I finally had to dig deep to find a phone number for one discount store’s corporate headquarters to stop getting their flyers.
The way various junk mailers have handled my requests has varied from very apologetic customer service representatives who deleted my address promptly to some shockingly snotty people who resisted fulfilling what is an entirely reasonable request. One realtor in my zipcode, who didn’t let the fact that I can’t afford the pricey harbor-front homes she shows keep her from sending me “newsletters” that took up my entire mailbox, seethed with rage when I called and politely asked her to remove me from her mailing list (prior to this, she had ignored SIX letters with the same request). Geez, lady, what’s your problem?
I even still get junk mail from my own phone/internet company, inviting me to buy a package I already have. I would disconnect the service (it isn’t very good in the first place, but the junk mail is what really irritates me), but no other phone company will provide service on my street and it’s a cellular dead zone.
By far the worst offender has been a certain evil cable company. When I canceled my home service with them I politely, but firmly, informed them that I did not wish to be contacted again. I was crystal clear about my intense dislike for junk mail. I’ve sent back everything they have sent me since. I have made *dozens* of phone calls – a few of the reps who answered promised me I wouldn’t be sent anything again (which has turned out to not be true), but most of them just rudely informed me that it was “impossible” (a family friend with a legal background tells me that they have no right to refuse). Some weeks ago I wrote to the company’s customer service department detailing all the problems I have had with them and reiterated my desire to be permanently taken off their mailing lists, yet this weekend I got TWO pieces of identical junk mail from them on the same day. When I called, after spending 35 minutes on hold (an improvement; their hold times used to top 60 minutes) I was told that I’d been removed and shouldn’t be receiving any more mail from them. FINALLY. I don’t mind a one-month delay on mailing list removal (much), but two years is way too long to wait for the correct answer. Still, this company has repeatedly lied to me about several different things. I honestly can’t trust them…and I sometimes wish I’d gone to law school just so I could find a legal way to force junk mailers to leave me alone.
Dumbest junk mail I’ve ever received:
*Giant Heifer International catalogs (don’t get me started)
*A catalog for an ugly, all-silk clothing line (really nice thing to send someone who has actual taste in clothes, is vegan, AND lives in a climate that is way too hot for silk)
*Obnoxious flyers from the Committee to Re-Elect Congressperson X (who ignores the issues I care about, ignores letters from constituents, and, frankly, is not very nice – why would I vote for someone like that?)
*Invitation to join the local Republican Women’s Club. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of ANY political party, and living in a mostly-red zip code will not change that. I am an independent voter and I like it that way.
*Invitations to join the AARP…all of which I received at the ripe old age of 19. As if I had any plans to retire anyway. I’d get bored doing nothing.
I know I’m not the only person who hates junk mail as much as I do. If everyone in the US alone put a stop to every last shred of junk mail that is sent to their address, it would save TONS of paper, a lot of ink, and the spines of a few postal workers. I hope a Do Not Mail list is created soon; it is the only way to make some companies stop bothering people who don’t want junk mail cluttering up their lives.
Yes, getting off all these lists can be a pain, but let me tell you, it is WORTH IT to unlock my tiny mailbox and see nothing but the water bill and a postcard from a friend at university in London.
It’s time to take back our mailboxes.
(*Names have been changed, of course.)
