Environmentalists Reveal the Appalling Amount of Trees Destroyed to Make Junk Mails Every Year

In 2010, thousands of residents of New York City opened their mailboxes to find another junk mail. When they flicked open the envelopes, the content hit them with a sensory blow. The leaflets inside were landfill-scented and they smelled of junk. Republican nominee Carl Paladino had deliberately conducted this stinky-letters campaign for political motives. In contrast, the junk mail people receive generally doesn’t smell like junk. Rather, it exudes the aroma of new restaurant menus, the salivating advertisements of real estate companies, the attractive offers of a local beauty salon, or unbidden religious solicitations. But ultimately, all those loose paper scraps, glossy pamphlets, wafer-thin flyers, and foldable catalogs end up in landfills.

Rebecca Clarke, environment and sustainability researcher, shared some points with Treehugger that can prove helpful in minimizing unwanted junk mail. For junk journal enthusiasts, it might be alluring to stow away all these flyers, pamphlets, and junk mail in their art supply drawer and use them to decorate their notebooks with funky collages and ephemera art. But for those who are concerned about decluttered lifestyle and environmental sustainability, junk mail is akin to that annoying salesman who calls you every day even though you tell him that you are not interested. Not only does it bombard your brain with distractions, but also leeches the environment of precious trees.

According to estimates, around 100 million trees are cut down each year for the production of billions of pieces of junk mail. 60% of this mail ends up in landfills, per the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This amounts to one billion pounds of waste each year. Sitting in landfill heaps, these waste papers start decomposing and spewing enormous quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas that's 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Add to it the deforestation that happened when trees were cut down to make paper.

One way to reduce all this junk mail from ending up in your letterbox is to eliminate credit card promotions, says Clarke. She explains that almost all credit card companies have mailing lists with people’s names that they use to send out junk mail. Thankfully, there is an “opt-out service” that people can use to unsubscribe to these unsolicited mails. Additionally, one can contact their biller and request them to shift their billing system from physical bills to digital or electric bills.

Another suggestion is to remove your name from the Data and Marketing Association (DMA), an organization that allows people to decide what mail they choose to receive in their mailbox. Their service also allows people to opt out of a category of mail they don’t want to receive. Magazines, for example. Another service called CatalogChoice allows people to unsubscribe from individual catalogs. A company named PaperKarma allows you to send an opt-out request to any advertiser or business via their app.

There is also Yellowpagesoptout.com, which allows you to opt out of Yellow Pages phone books if you still receive them. “It’s a small act that makes a difference,” Joshua Martin, the director of the Environmental Paper Network, told The New York Times. “It’d really be significant for reducing the demand for wood, water, and energy.” The simplest place to start the grass-roots work is to make a habit of not signing up for mails that you don’t want to receive. Elsewhere, some people are attaching these golden-and-black “No Junk Mail” boards on their letterboxes or front doors to make it clear to the letter carriers that junk mail and unsolicited marketing offers are uninvited in their homes.