WEEKLY WHINE

Return to sender

by Reginald J Goober

As you know, we here at GoobNet are committed to the environment. That’s why GoobNet exists as a website and not as a mail service. Just consider how inconvenient it would be to have to send a written request for “httpp://goobnet.net/” [where HTTPP is HyperText Transfer Protocol by Post], and then, when the text reaches you a week later, to have to send another request for “httpp://goobnet.net/whine/2009/0420.php” and wait another week, by which time you will be two Weekly Whines behind, whereas you are currently n Weekly Whines behind [where n is equal to INT(DAYSBETWEEN(NOW(),THETIMEWHENTHISPAGEWASORIGINALLYPOSTED())/7)]. If millions of people all did this instead of viewing our website online [which millions of people do not do anyway], our environment would be in horrible shape.

However, what is equally damaging, if not more so, is the vast amounts of junk mail that are still being sent. The production, transport, printing, and chucking of this type of mail causes over 50,000,000,000 kg of carbon dioxide to be released into Earth’s atmosphere every year, according to ForestEthics.

Complaints abound about E-mail spam. Laws restricting it are in effect in many different nations, and on occasion, reports are compiled examining the environmental impact of spam. For instance, this Earth Day, McAfee determined that 33,000,000,000 kWh are used every year to send and filter spam. This figure was reached by estimating the additional processor cycles executed by the world’s servers and clients.

According to McAfee, the associated carbon dioxide emissions are the equivalent of 3,100,000 passenger cars on the world’s roads over the course of a year. But ForestEthics’s estimate of physical junk mail CO₂ emissions is equivalent to three times as many cars. The environmental impact of physical unwanted mail is clear, but undiscussed. Why?

Third class mail, or “standard mail” according to the USPS, totalled 43% of all mail in the United States in 2003, according to a report published in that year. If the USPS delivers 212,000,000,000 pieces of mail every year [as cited in a New York Times blog post], that would equate to 91,000,000,000 items every year. But for all that effort, very little is actually gained. As the Times reports, Nancy Costopulos of the American Marketing Association says that “two percent is a really good response rate”.

What is worse, more than half of these mailings are simply being thrown away, not even recycled. In a report titled “Municipal Solid Waste in the United States”, the Environmental Protection Agency said that 5,910,000 tons of standard mail were created in 2007. Only 40.3% of this was recycled, leaving the other 3,530,000 tons to be sent to landfills. Of the other sixteen categories of paper and paperboard waste listed in Table 4 of Chapter 2 of that report, only corrugated boxes, folding cartons, and “other nonpackaging paper” contributed larger total masses to US landfills.

For those who do not want junk mail, there are currently few actions available. The USPS does not currently act on “return to sender” tags on standard mail, as hilariously documented in this item from the Dallas Morning News. There are services that claim to reduce unsolicited mailings, such as 41pounds.org and Opt Out Prescreen, but as our GoobNet staffers’ experiences have shown, these have little to no effect.

For example, in the case of the Direct Marketing Association, you may specify your mailing preferences at http://www.dmachoice.org/. You may then report violations of your opt-out choice to the DMA’s Ethics Operating Committee. As the DMA’s own site points out, though, cooperation with DMA committees is voluntary. The supposed “DMA Choice” site, therefore, is a toothless measure that is unenforceable and leaves consumers without legal recourse.

By all measures, the National Do Not Call Registry in the US has been a great success. The 2009 Economic Report of the President says that 72% of Americans have registered. Of those, 91% said that they received fewer telemarketing calls after they registered, and 77% said that they received a great deal fewer telemarketing calls.

The obvious solution, then, is a centralised registry in which individuals may request not to receive direct mailings. Any licensed mailer would then be legally bound to respect the preferences made in this registry. This places the choice back in the hands of the consumer, avoids resentment of direct mail campaigns from consumers who don’t want such mailings, allows mailers to concentrate on the prospective customers who do want such mailings, reduces the workload on postal services, and most importantly, benefits the environment.

Just such a registry is being proposed by ForestEthics’s Do Not Mail petition, which is rapidly approaching the 100,000 signature mark. We here at GoobNet have signed the petition [I was number 94,956], and we hope to see your names on there as well.