How to Reduce Your Junkmail

Each of us receives 41 pounds of junkmail a year. Learn how to reduce your waste stream by reducing the amount of junkmail you receive. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Video Transcription

Hey everyone, I am Eric Rochow and this is Real World Green. Today, we are going to talk about a simple way to reduce your impact on the earth and that is, to eliminate your junk mail. Well, maybe not all your junk mail because this is Ford truck part catalog and when you own A2Ford F150, that truck part catalog is very important. Did you know that the average person receives 41 pounds of junk mail in a year, thats about 560 pieces of junk mail and that junk mail causes you to waste 70 hours a year, just dealing with it. So today we are going to talk about ways to reduce and eliminate junk mail in your life and its really simple, even I can do it. There is couple of different ways to reduce the amount of junk mail that's coming into your mailbox. The first way is very manual but its very simple. Simply, if you have magazines that you don't want to get or catalogs, I am sorry, that you don't want to get, especially clothing catalogs because we all know, that you can just go down at the local Army Navy and get some fine, very high fashion clothing. So who needs clothing catalogs? Right? Bad joker. What you do, is you take and you cut the Mailing Label and the Mail Label has some customers numbers and things like that. You take that whole thing and you cut it. So you have cut out the Mailing Label of the catalog and you have made sure to include any special customer number that you may have here and you have written very nicely, Please remove from mailing list and then you take that label and then you get yourself an envelope, we will put company's name on it and their address which is always on here somewhere, then you simply put that in and then you mail that. And it will take 6 to 8 weeks, but they will remove you from their list. Sometimes, it takes longer, sometimes it take shorter. It depends on the company. There are some catalog retailers that you can actually go to their websites and remove your name as well. If you have a ton of junk mail, you can also hire a company to do it. There is a company called 41pounds.org, that for $41, for a five year term, they will take care of all your junk mail. What they do, is they contact direct marketers and catalog companies and they request that your name be removed from all their list and if you ever get something you don't want, you just send that of to them and for the next five years, they are going to take care for you, which is a really neat thing. So 41pounds says, when you sign up for their plan, which is $41 for five years, you are going to conserve 1.7 trees, you are going to save 700 gallons of water and you are going to prevent 460 pounds of carbon dioxide, you think I could say that, from being released into the atmosphere. So when you eliminate your junk mail, either by the manual method like this or with the group like 41pounds.org, we save in a number of ways. First of all, we save water. Water is needed to make paper. You save trees, trees are used to make paper also. Over a 100 million trees are harvested annually to print catalogs and direct mail pieces and you also with global warming, because now you are not getting these catalogs, so the catalogs don't have to be trucked from a Printing Plant to a post office, to your post office, to your home and I think the biggest thing, one of those light bulb things blowing up from my head is that you save your own time. It's estimated that the average person spends 70 hours a year, just dealing with junk mail. Okay, so there you go. Couple of ways to reduce your impact on the earth by reducing your junk mail, either manually; you just cut off all the labels, put them in a stamped envelope, Remove me from the list or go with the group like 41pounds.org for $41 for five years, they will take care of all your junk mail for you. I mean its kind of just one of those simple things that I really like. So, you can do it, I can do it, I actually do it all the time, I am always like ripping them off and saying, Remove from list except for the important truck catalog, of course, because trucks are--, parts are falling of my truck all the time and you don't need those clothing catalogs because you are going to go to the Army Navy Store now and buy some fine clothes like I wear, right? So that's it. That's our show for the week. Please tell your friends about it, visit our website, realworldgreen.com. Send us email, send us show ideas and have a good day. Alright.