I too am fed up with all the junk mail.  I am not overly concerned about identity theft due to this, but I am still cautious and shred anything that has my name on it.

These companies that send all this stuff are forcing me to use my time to deal with their trash.  My time is valuable to me, I have many other things that I want to do with it.

Recycling is a bit of a problem too.  I don't just shred paper.  I also shred old CD's and DVD's, credit cards and other non-paper items, so there is no realistic way to recycle the shredded paper.  Even if I did want to sort out just the paper and recycle it, the recycling provided by my community gives me a very small container and the bulk of the shredded paper would overwhelm it.


On top of all of that, there are some issues with recycling not really getting recycled.  There have been quite a few companies caught sending their recycling on barges to landfills in remote parts of the world.

It would definitely be nice if there was a central place to turn it all off... Maybe someday...

Quoting CalebAndCo:

Quote:
On a lot of the junkmail I am not remotely interested in, I have been blacking out the barcode and 'Sharpie'ing "Refused - RTS". My volume is down considerably.

That is interesting.  When I did RTS on my junk mail my post center stamped it BULK POST< To be delivered to Addressee or Current Resident

Quoting VibroCount:

Quote:
A college buddy of mine had a back yard full of used cinderblocks. He enjoyed gluing the return postage guaranteed cards and envelopes onto these chunks of concrete and putting them in mailboxes (wham!). He never found out if the post office actually delivered them, or even removed them from the boxes...

That may never have worked, but it certainly won't work today.  Most of the mail boxes around here have a notice about:

Quote:
U.S. Mail Packages and Parcels over 13 ozs. with only 'live' stamps must be taken to Post Office Counter and presented to a Postal employee.
They cannot be dropped in a mail box or given to a postal carrier. Packages will be returned to sender.

This, I think, came about thanks to 911 and/or the anthrax scare of a few years ago.  So, if you wanted to add a return postage guaranteed card to a brick and mail it, you'd have to go to the Post Office to do it -- and I doubt they'd take it now.

BTW:  I am of mixed feelings about junk mail.  I am a catalog addict -- I love getting them and reading them.  I get so many around this time of year, though, that even I get overwhelmed.  I don't know why I get catalogues from cigar companies (I don't smoke) or pet companies (I don't own any pets) or hardware/tool companies (I'm not a DIY'er) -- but I still enjoy reading 'em and, as my grandfather used to say, "think about all the things I can do without."

Other types of junk mail (pre-approved cards, insurance offers, the nearly-daily offers from Verizon and Comcast for high speed internet & telephone service, etc.) go into the shredder.  I put up with these because I enjoy catalog shopping, but I could do without the volume.  Many of these places send three catalogs a month -- and, since I use a separate delivery address for packages, I get duplicate copies of many -- on to my home, one to my delivery address.