By my rough figures, .jpg)
Phoenix residents spend over $27 billion a year purchasing junk mail products and services. In return for this loyalty, junk mailers sell your names and personal data between 25 and 50 times annually to gross over $48 million in list sales in this city alone. As an industry, the list business takes in over $44 billion nationally each year in revenue, not one penny of which goes into the pockets of Phoenix consumers. But all of this was before the economy turned sour.
For years junk mailers enjoyed an average response rate of around 2 % per 100 pieces of mail sent, which sounds abysmal but was profitable. I know. I was a data broker and consultant in the industry for 35 years. But this all went south when people began to lose their homes, their jobs, and their credit cards, the latter critical to any purchase by mail, telephone or online. They stopped buying as much, and the junk mailers now cannot afford to send out as much mail due to increased costs in paper, postage, etc.
I did a story on this back in May (here) with a different perspective; it was focused on how junk e-mail is being positioned to replace traditional junk mail. Of course that means more spam, but that is not what this article is about. Today I want to convince you just how harmful this medium is to today’s environment..jpg)
It’s about a “2% factor” that represents only two responses received for each 100 pieces sent out. Now that sounds so absurd it would stop most people in their tracks wondering how the junk mailers can make any money.
Because they can sell your name and any private information they have about you at astronomical rates mentioned earlier, making $.60 on the dollar. That in itself should gall anyone since none of it goes in the name-holder’s bank account, but this isn’t even the purpose of my story. Junk mail is a threat to the environment that has no equal. Here’s why.
To begin, that 98 percent of unwanted junk mail ends up in the garbage dump, and some catalogs have 64 or more pages. In excess of 100 million trees are destroyed each year just to support this 
insane waste of natural resources. If you’re the average Phoenix household, you receive 41 pounds of junk mail a year, 16 pieces a week, and 44 percent goes to the landfill unopened. More than 100 billion pieces of junk mail are sent out nationally each year.
It takes over 500,000 garbage truck loads to transport all junk mail to the landfills annually. By 2010, just under 50 percent of the solid mass located in landfills is expected to be paper and paperboard waste. Zogby International, a research firm, found that 92 percent of respondents discard or recycle junk mail without even reading it. They also found that 93 percent of respondents knew about the FTC’s Do-Not-Call Registry, and 89 percent of them support a Do-Not-Mail Registry.
Now is the time to decide this, Phoenix. Make your choice known and vote on this very important issue, below.
For more info:
Comments
Sign the petition to establish a Do Not Mail Registry at donotmail.org .
99,000 have already signed!
Why not let people decide if they want to receive junk mails, it's a free country isn't it? The one's that want it should sign up for them, and the rest of the people and trees could be left in peace.
While I support the concept of the Do Not Mail registry, I am concerned that it will result in less revenue for the Post Office and higher overall rates for everyone else. Why not adopt standards that get the industry to be more accountable (i.e. by establishing incentives that encourage the use of recycled products for junk mail-which create larger markets for recycled products and tends to encourge more recycling.) Laws could then be establish that allow people to return junk mail at the senders cost. The Post Office would incorporate a "REJECT" check box in the postmark on each piece of junk mail. If unwanted, the box would checked and the junk mail would be returned. The Post Office would collect the return fees thus making the sender more careful about who they sent mail. Any excess revenues collected could be used to reclaim forests and reduce environmental impacts. Everyone is more accountable and results in a far more effective way to let the market determine outcomes.
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