Stop Sending Me This Junk

In January I wrote about the Catalog Crisis in America and some solutions to stop receiving millions of unwanted catalogs. That entry has inspired today’s topic of how to stop receiving other types of junk mail that ends up in your garbage and then landfills.

1. Credit Card offers are the worst. According to the Federal Trade Commission, If you decide that you don’t want to receive prescreened offers of credit and insurance, you have two choices: You can opt out of receiving them for five years or opt out of receiving them permanently. Call toll-free 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-567-8688) or visit www.optoutprescreen.com for details. The telephone number and website are operated by the major consumer reporting companies. When you call or visit the website, you’ll be asked to provide certain personal information, including your home telephone number, name, Social Security number, and date of birth. The information you provide is confidential and will be used only to process your request to opt out.

Remember that if you have joint credit relationships, like a mortgage or a car loan with a spouse, partner, or other adult, you may continue to receive some prescreened solicitations until both of you exercise your opt-out right.

That is good to know. I am going to opt out for sure. I don’t need to waste all that paper or another credit card!

2. To stop the multitudes of AOL online discs, is call 1-800-605-4297. I don’t think you can do it online.

3. That crazy ValPak you get in the mail all the time, but can never really use the 18 carpet cleaners and your not moving soon, so cancel it!

4. Direct Marketing Association has some great tips on their web site as well. Like, How to remove your name from mailing lists. Some consumers would like to receive less advertising mail at home. DMA’s Mail Preference Service (MPS), which was created in 1971, is designed to help consumers decrease the amount of nationally generated commercial or nonprofit mail they receive at home. Here is information on how you can opt out of mailing lists.

Now that we have gone over the serious stuff. Check this web series out, Off The List. This guy, Jonny Hal is on a one person mission to get off all junk mail lists.

Series Preview

[For all the Episodes click here]

It is awesome. I love this guy.

This web series reminded me that we will never get our true voices or message heard through mass media. as their only purpose is to sell advertising. I think we all need to think of how we are going to make a difference. Jonny Hal did it through his webisodes. I am doing it with this blog. The internet is still in it’s infancy, it is the Wild, Wild West, while we can still get our voices heard here we need to. No more complaining that one person can’t make a difference, of course we can, that is just the type of thinking is the people making money off your faithlessness want you to believe.

Wake up!

-Cara

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Reason 19 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:

Half of every butchered cow and a third of every butchered pig becomes either byproduct material or waste. And “mortalities” are integral to every feedlot and stockyard. What’s an industry to do with all this death and gore? Call the renderer straightaway! Recycling, they call it. Lips are exported to Mexico for taco filling; horns are made into gelatin; other parts are fashioned into drugs, aphrodisiacs, and industrial ingredients. Much is dried to a tacky brown powder to be mixed into chicken and pig feed. The rest is minced, pulverized, and boiled down for cosmetics and household products. Essentially, assume slaughterhouse byproduct is all around you.