The quest ends: opt-out of junk mail here!

OK. I’ve covered ways to reduce the amount of unwanted physical mail that shows up, from unwanted credit card offers to switching to paperless billing, but this post (should be) the end-all cumulation of opt-out methods.

“But why would I want to stop receiving those wonderful, targeted offers from some of my favorite companies?” you may be asking, but probably aren’t.

Well, aside from the devastating environmental impact (more than 100 million trees’ worth of bulk mail arrive in American mail boxes each year – the equivalent of deforesting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months*) it clutters up your home, takes time to sort through, is a threat to your identity and requires that the postman spend less time with his family. (That last one is a joke. Kind of.)

There are two sites you need to be aware of.

The first is ProQuo, a site that’s sole purpose is to allow you to pick and choose which offers are mailed to you. I haven’t used it myself (just found out about it this morning), but TechCrunch gave it a rave review.

The next is the World Privacy Forum’s list of 10 agencies to contact to get off their mailing lists. From financial institution opt-outs to car insurance to the Do Not Call list, it walks you through how each one works and how to ask to be removed. It’s quite comprehensive.

Of course, theoretically ProQuo should take care of all that for you, so check that one out first.

Oh, yeah. It’s important to keep in mind that it takes a while for the request to go through, so if you want to avoid the onslaught of upcoming Christmas junk mail jump on this train soon.

LivSimpl

*New American Dream calculation from Conservatree and U.S. Forest Service statistics