FACT: Junk mail is by far the largest source of involuntary household waste. FACT: 40% of all waste in U.S. landfills is paper waste. FACT: The United States Postal Service delivers over 50 lbs of junk mail to the average household every year, most of it unwanted by the recipient. FACT: Mailers pay a small fraction of the rate per piece that you pay to mail a letter. In short, taxpayers subsidize the junk mailers trashing our trees, mailboxes and landfills.
MORE FACTS: Almost half of all timber used in the U.S. is used to make paper. More than 100 million trees are cut down yearly to produce junk mail. Most is unwanted and trashed unrecycled. Manufacturing and shipping junk mail emits more greenhouse gas than 9 million cars. Many of the inks used in junk mail contain toxic metals; leaching into groundwater is inevitable. Further information is available at http://www.greeneducationnetwork.com/article/petition-for-law-to-stop-unwanted-junk-mail
CONSIDER: A federal law was enacted giving citizens the right and means to ban unwanted telemarketing calls to their homes, with good but far less compelling justification. This popular law is known as the Do Not Call Registry (DNC). Surely we have right to refuse the waste of our time and taxes on the destruction of our environment!
I THEREFORE PETITION the Congress and President of the United States, State Legislatures, and Governments throughout the world to enact legislation enabling citizens to refuse receipt of junk mail. Such a law should take the form of a Do Not Mail Registry(DNM).
We the undersigned ask that you please enact the legislation that 89% of the American Public wants: a Do Not Mail Registry like the Do Not Call Registry we now have for unwanted telemarketing calls?
The Do Not Call Registry is one of the most popular laws ever passed in the U.S., and there are even more compelling reasons to enact Do Not Mail legislation:
The huge portion of junk mail that is unwanted by recipients adds more to global warming than 7 million cars, destroys over 80 million trees, swells landfills, wastes our time, and puts toxic heavy-metal ink into our groundwater. Worse, our tax dollars to U.S.P.S, go to discounts to the same junk mailers responsible for this destructive waste.
The Direct Marketing Association has failed to stem the global-warming tide of unwanted junk mail. Many of the greatest offenders are not DMA members, and DMA cannot even police or enforce sustainable practices on its own members.
It is time for you to do it, for the sake of all of us and our children.
