Stop spam, save a tree

So everyone hates email spam. It's generally agreed to be a huge problem - billions of dollars are lost per year - there's even a handy little online calculator. But really, electrons are recyclable. What makes me sick to my stomach is JUNK MAIL.

I am well and truly crushed under the weight of daily physical paper junk mail that comes in: credit offers, personalized cards to cater to all tastes, books of coupons I'll never use, discounts to magazines, weekly circulars for stores that don't even exist within 40 miles of my home. For the last year, I saved up all the credit offers, with the idea that evenutally I'd turn them into a piece of artwork, a giant collage paying tribute to consumer debt. But I got sick of seeing so much paper wasted: the storage box I set aside for this task is overflowing. Tonight I finally decided to do something about it. You can too, and here's how:

Register with the Direct Marketing Association, here. They are the folks that manage the do-not-mail lists, and you can either print out a form and mail it in, or pay $5 and register online. They'll send your name out with a request to exclude you from mailing lists.

The opt-out process is only good for five years at a stretch, but it's totally and completely worth it. Think about it this way: email spam costs $874 per person a year. Junk mail spam costs a tree and a half per person per year. And that's not even considering the landfills.