There was a time in my life when I enjoyed getting mail of any kind. Packages, junk mail, bank statements, ads, and newspapers were a welcome addition to my mailbox. For me those days are numbered. I am getting tired of carrying junk mail from mailbox directly to the recycling bin.

For the most part our junk mail seems fairly limited to the classic pre-approved credit cards and insurance deals. For some reason State Farm seems to really be interested in getting my wife a new insurance policy. We average three letters a month from State Farm, all exactly the same letter just from a different insurance rep in the area. (I have a hunch there is a connection between the increase in junk mail from State Farm and my wife’s crush on Aaron Rodgers, but I guess I don’t really have any evidence to support this theory. Just a hunch…)

The past few months there has been an influx of junk mail, and the waste in resources really is bothering me. The fact that extra paper is being used, ink is being used for printing, and energy is wasted when the postal service handles the mail. It just seems unnecessary and thankfully I stumbled across a potential way to reduce the junk mail we receive.

The book Generation Green points to three websites that claim to remove unwanted junk mail from your mailbox. Unforunately, two of these sites are no longer registered. One of these sites, catalogchoice.org does provide a simple search option to remove your address from unwanted junk mail. As the book Generation Green points out, reducing junk mail is nice for de-cluttering your mail and helps to reduce paper waste and energy used to create and deliver the mail. Using the search link on there site you can reduce the amount of wasted paper and energy being use to create all this junk mail.

In my limited experience with the site so far it is quite easy to use. Just search for the company that is sending the unwanted mail and the site will direct you to a link to be removed from the mailings or supply the phone number to call in order to have your address removed from the company’s database.

Take a few minutes now to help reduce your junk mail and in the future you just may save energy, time, and resources. As I have mentioned in the post The Starfish Parable sometimes even small steps can end up making a big difference. Peace.