UPDATE 10/8/97 POST-IT NOTES A MAJOR PROBLEM FOR RECYCLERS!

TAMING THE MONSTER
Junk mail. We all receive those unwanted solicitations, catalogs and advertisements. In some homes junk mail is more than 10 percent of the total waste, making it the single largest component of the household waste stream.

Contents

• Why bother
• How it happens
• How to stop what's coming now
• How to sop it before it starts
• The 8 fold path to less junk mail
• How determined are you?

Why Bother?
Recycling junk mail may be a good short-term solution, however it doesn’t reduce the number of trees cut down each year to make it in the first place - or the amount of money taxpayers must spend for it’s disposal whether it’s recycled or disposed of in a landfill.

About 62 million trees and 25 billion gallons of water are used to produce a typical year’s worth of junk mail in the United States. That's over 80 pounds per household or close to a tree’s worth. That amounts to a lot of precious natural resources wasted, not to mention the frustration and time spent dealing with your daily dose of junk mail. That’s why time invested in reducing the amount of junk mail you receive is time well spent. Here is how to do it.

HOW IT HAPPENS
Every time you give out your name and address - whether you’re subscribing to a magazine, registering to vote, placing a credit card order, entering a sweepstakes, joining an organization, or donating to charity - you are being added to a list of some kind. Even the U.S. Postal Service sells your name and address when you complete a change of address form. Your goal in reducing junk mail is to limit access to your name and address in order to prevent it from being traded, rented, or sold.

Most credit bureaus, publishers, and other companies are in the business of selling or renting mailing lists to each other. Fortunately, many of these companies offer a preference service in which you may write to them and request that your name be deleted from their files.

HOW TO STOP WHAT’S COMING NOW
It's best to attack the junk mail problem on two fronts.

First, directly contact those companies or organizations that currently send you junk mail. We've outlined four simple ways to do this:

1 Write to the company and ask that your name and address be removed from their mailing list. (see mail-back notes.)

2 Mail that displays the message- "address-correction requested" or 'return postage guaranteed" can be returned unopened to the sender by writing "Refused Return to Sender" on the envelope. However, writing "Return to Sender" on mail.without this message will not work as the post office will not return, it to the sender.

3 If there is a postage-paid return envelope inside the solicitation, detach your mailing label from the envelope, attach it with a note asking that your name be deleted and mail it back to the sender. (They have to pay for the postage.) Do the same with a postage-paid return postcard, by taping the mailing label to the card and asking that your name be deleted.

4 Some of your junk mail (most catalogs) may include an 800 number. Call and ask that your name and address be removed from their mailing list.

Second, contact the large organizations that regularly sell, trade or rent their mailing lists. These organizations compile names and addresses from a myriad of sources and chances are your name is on one or all of their computers.

Follow the 8 fold path to less junk mail!

HOW TO STOP IT BEFORE IT STARTS
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When placing catalog orders, making charitable contributions, or subscribing to a magazine, remember to always request that your name be placed on an "In-house list" only. This will ensure that they can still contact you about upcoming promotions, sales, events, etc. regarding their company only, but they cannot sell or trade your name to anyone else. Good Luck in your adventures of reducing junk mail. Of course, some unwanted mail will undoubtedly get through so please dispose of it properly - recycle!

THE 8 FOLD PATH TO LESS JUNK MAIL
1. Catalogs, Broadcast Advertisements:
Many businesses and organizations subscribe to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to market goods and services to consumers via direct mail. Write and ask that your name and address be placed on a "delete file" through their mail preference Service. Be sure to include your name and address in all the ways they appear on your junk mail. This will remove your name from most, but not all, mailing lists. Be patient; it may take three months or more for your request to take effect. Once you are in their "delete file" you will remain there for five years.. If you want faster response from companies that are members of the DMA, contact Metromail Corporation and the Polk Company, marketing list brokers.

The Polk Co. - Name Deletion File List Compilation and Development 9400 Monroe Blvd. Taylor, MI 48180-1814

Direct Marketing Association Mail Preference Service P.O. Box 9008 Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008

Metromail Corporation List Maintenance 949 West Bond Lincoln, NE 68521 (800) 228-4571 ext. 4819

2. Coupons, Ads, Product Samples:
If you don't want to receive packets of ads and coupons, request that your address be removed from the following companies' mailing lists. Call or send them the cover of the piece of mail with the label on it, with a note saying to please remove your address from all the lists for mailings sent out by this company. Note: addresses appear on these mailings, so that is what you want deleted.

In San Diego contact ADVO Inc. 584-1011 Val-Pac Coupons 401-1528 The Pennysaver 576-6137 The Adworks 271-0707

Harte Hanks Direct Marketing List Maintenance 100 Alco Place Baltimore, MD 21227-2090 (301) 621-1648

Carol Wright Gifts Customer Services P.O. Box 8502 Lincoln, NE 68544 (402) 474-5174

3. Credit Bureaus:
TRW, Equifax, and Trans Union are three big companies that provide potential lenders with your credit history. If your credit is good they also sell your name, address and payment history to bank and credit companies. Call TRW to remove you from their direct marketing files in 24 hours. TRW can remove you from Equifax's and Trans Union's files also, though it may take 90 days. If you want quicker response, contact Equifax and Trans Union directly.

Equifax Marketing Decision Systems, Inc. P.O. BOX 740123 Atlanta, GA 30374-0123

Trans Union 555 West Adams St. 8th Floor Chicago, IL 60661

TRW Targeting Marketing Services Attn: Opt-Out-Service P.O. BOX 2101 Allen TX 75002-9501

The national credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian recently joined together and established a single toll free telephone number for consumers to use in opting out of all three of their national databases. (888) 5 OPT OUT or (888) 567-8688.

A fourth credit reporting agency, Innovis, also receives this information from (888) 5 OPT OUT.

4. Credit Cards:
For American Express card holders, ask AMEX to remove your name from its direct marketing lists. You can be removed from in-house lists, outside company lists, or both. Contact:

Customer Service
American Express
200 Vesey St. Tower C
New York, NY 10285 1-800-327-2177

For all others, call or write to the customer service office for each credit card you own asking them not to sell, trade or lend your name and address to any organization for its mailing lists. You must do this for each card so that if you have three Visa cards with different banks/institutions, you would have to write each one individually.

5. Phone Books:
Many organizations use phone books as their national database. You may consider having an unlisted number, or list just your name and phone number, not your address.

6. U.S. Postal Service:
When you fill out a change of address, the forwarding information is rented to 24 private businesses licensed by U.S. Postal Service. This is how list brokers, Credit bureaus and others get your name in the first place. You might consider not filing a change of address when you move. Instead, send out your own postcards to those whose you want to receive, and ask the post office to hold your mail for pickup everyone knows your new address.

7. Magazines, Organizations, etc.:
Contact all magazines, newspapers, and newsletters you receive, all charitable organizations with which you are affiliated, and any company to which you give out your name, address or telephone number, and make sure they put you on an "in house list... only". use the included Mail-Back Notes for this purpose..

8. Warranty Cards: It isn't necessary to complete warranty cards to be covered by a warranty. Most warranty cards request demographic information which is used to add your name to various organizations' mailing lists. The only reason to return a warranty card is to find out about product recalls. If you want to return the card for that reason, only provide your name, address, and product serial number.

HOW DETERMINED ARE YOU?
Are you angry about the lack of control you have regarding access to your name and address? The U.S. Postal Service actually profits from the selling of names and addresses to private business interesets withou the consent of the address holders,. Legislation requiring the U.S. Postal Service to ask your permission to sell your name and address could go a long way toward taming the Junk Mail Monster.

Write your representative or member of Congress and encourage them to reform activities of the U.S. Postal Service to stop the sale of names and addresses. For more information and an update on pending legislation contact the STOP JUNK MAIL ASSOCIATION 1 800 827 5549. They lobby on behalf of postal privacy rights.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse at the University of San Diego School of Law’s Center for Public Interest Law offers a toll-free hotline for information about technology-related privacy issues. You can also register complaints about privacy abuses. They provide a series of fact sheets, including one on junk mail.

More specifically, the sticky stuff on Post-It notes, postage stamps, labels and tape. When such materials - what the industry calls "stickies" - are recycled along with office paper and junk mail, they gum up machines. They leave the recycled paper speckled with black dots. And worst, stickies weaken the paper, causing tears in the giant manufactured rolls.

For the paper industry, the consequences have been serious. Four giant recycling mills - in West Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts and Maine - out of seven that have been built since 1994 have shut down. A dozen mills are operating at partial capacity. Altogether, recycling mills have defaulted on more than $1 billion in bonds and bank loans.

Recyclers have also been hit by falling prices and weak demand for recycled paper, but the main culprit in the mills' decline has been what insiders call the "stickies problem," the unexpected technical difficulties in removing self-sticking materials from office paper.

Because of stickies, there has been no increase in the percentage of stationery, envelopes and junk mail that gets recycled. Only about 35% of such refuse is recycled, a level that has been constant since 1994. And most of that is converted into low-quality paper such as tissue.

Stickies affect only the efforts to recycle writing paper. The percentage of newsprint, the paper that USA TODAY and other newspapers use, that gets recycled has climbed steadily over the years to 63% in 1996.

Stickies cost the industry $650 million a year, largely in unrecyclable paper, says Elizabeth Seiler, senior director of recycling at the American Forest & Paper Association. "The industry has invested enormous resources in the stickies problem, but technology hasn't caught up," she says.

The expensive new mills were supposed to be state-of-the-art, using equipment from Europe to deal with stickies. But the new technology didn't didn't filter out stickies as well as expected.

When the mills' losses began piling up, a "stickies summit" was held last year in Washington, D.C., to bring together recyclers, adhesive makers, the postal service and others.

"The best way to solve this problem is at its source: Change the way stickies are made," says Said Abubakr, head of stickies research at the U.S. Forest Service.

He recently tested 20 new stickies formulas developed by the adhesive industry. Five of those seem suitable to recycling. His standard: more than 90% of the adhesive must be removed during recycling vs. only 50% under current formulas. He expects that some environmentally safe stickies will be available next year.

"We need to solve this problem, among others, because 52 million tons of paper still end up in the landfills," Abubakr says. That is roughly half of all paper used annually in the U.S.
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY