Go Green By Reducing Junk Mail

Today is Earth Day 2015.  I have written several blogs about saving the earth, so today I am taking a different approach.  We all get tons of junk mail which definitely isn't earth friendly.  All this extra paper depletes our resources and clogs up the landfills.  Unless you deal with excess mail everyday, it has a tendency to accumulate.  We do recycle everything we can.  I also shred some of it and either compost it or feed it to my worms http://www.thecabincountess.com/2013/01/an-unusual-type-of-farmer.html, but the best thing would be to not receive it at all.

Recently I discovered an app called Paper Karma.  https://www.paperkarma.com/

It is a Free smartphone app.  I know a lot of my friends don't have smartphones and don't feel the need to have one, but these phones have so many more uses than just talking on the phone.  Having a camera available at all times is a great reason.   The paper karma app uses the phones camera to take a picture of the junk mail address.   Once you submit the photo of the name and address of the company you consider junk, they contact the company to have your name taken off the distribution list.  Just like the no call list, some companies are either too small or don't qualify for some reason.  I figure eliminating a few is better than nothing.

There are probably many ways to do this without the app, but the phone application makes it so easy.  I admit I haven't had it long enough to see if the junk mail is actually reduced, but hopefully it works.  I am really tired of getting credit card offers.  After the picture is submitted and accepted, the app will confirm "success" with this message....

Voilà! We've sent your request successfully!

It may take a few weeks for the company to process your request.
We'll check back in 12 days to make sure they honored it.

I have no monetary interest in this app, and there may be many others that do the same thing.  I just hope it works.