Addicted to Junk
Today, the Seattle City Council will consider signing a resolution “urging the Washington State Legislature to establish a Do Not Mail Registry,” an opt-in do not mail list that is also gaining traction in San Francisco, New York, and Florida. The reason for the resolution? The United States Postal Service has an insatiable hunger for junk.
Every time the USPS slips another piece of unsolicited direct mail into your current resident slot -- often in the form of a colorful or official-looking envelope that stands a 44% chance of going to the landfill unopened -- they know that without it they’d already be sunk.
Things aren’t going well for the USPS. In 2008 the semi-federal institution lost $2.8 billion, and the hemorrhaging continues. The Service’s foundations have been steadily eroding for many years, yet it has remained confident that it is too important to recede or too afraid to do anything about it. It has yet to take any self-preservation measures as unions and lobbyists fight for a status quo. Junk mail has been its iron lung, but now, because citizens have found a tremendously easy way to curtail an enormous amount of environmental waste, the writing on the virtual wall is becoming increasingly clear. It won’t be long until the USPS goes the way of print journalism and the recording music industry. Soon, it may only need a skeleton crew to deliver federal documents, utility bills, and nonprofit flyers to the few people who choose not to receive them online.
The environmental statistics are much too convincing to ignore. Every year an average American household receives 848 pieces of unsolicited mail. Over 100 billion pieces of junk mail delivered each year demand the destruction of 100 million trees, releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and going quickly into the trash. More statistics are available on the ForestEthics website.
The topic is more confusing than it seems with issues of state versus federal powers and freedom of speech rights both coming into play. High school civics teachers should be having some fun with this. Many people think it is only a matter of time until junk mail is completely done away with, but it remains to be seen whether the USPS can last long enough for it to matter.
