"Junk mail is inherently wasteful," said Mark Schofield of ForestEthics, which has worked with retailers to reduce the number of catalogs sent to people's homes. The group has been working with five of the largest credit-card companies - Bank of America, Chase, American Express, Discover and Capital One - to reduce paper and use more recycled paper.

In 2008 ForestEthics launched a website (DoNotMail.org) that listed the problems spawned by direct advertising and included a petition supporting a Do Not Mail Registry. The petition has more than 115,000 signatures. "Many people don't realize how easily their names and personal information are bought and sold," said Will Craven, a ForestEthics media officer. "It's quite easy to buy a list that targets very specific groups, people who are most vulnerable."

We have all had at least one unpleasant experience with junk mail, and ForestEthics needs to hear about yours so that we can amass evidence that the worst junk mailers -- including Chase, GEICO, Bank of America, Discover, Capital One, and AmEx -- need to shape up and stop shipping out all this worthless crap.

Specifically, Canada's Boreal Forest. Yesterday, ForestEthics joined eight other environmental groups in the largest conservation initiative in history. We're working around the clock to keep Endangered Forests out of your mailbox.

The Do Not Mail resolution before the Spokane County commissioners, and soon to be before the Spokane City Council, makes good sense whether you’re concerned about the environment or just tired of “junk mail.” And when you think through the few objections to it, it makes even better sense.

Be our media, share your junk mail story on CitizenGlobal.

Check out what Do Not Mail supporters in Spokane, Washington are up to -- working to pass their own Do Not Mail resolution!

We've accomplished so much over the past few years. Check out some of the highlights!

US Postmaster General John Potter last week recommended that the Postal Service eliminate Saturday delivery in order to help stanch the multi-billion dollar bleeding that the USPS has been experiencing for nearly half a decade.

If you think receiving your daily dose of junk mail just kills trees, clogs landfills, exacerbates climate change, is an invitation to identity theft, and is incredibly annoying, well, it actually gets worse: you are also paying for the privilege of receiving it.

Great news in the fight to regain control of our mailboxes: the Seattle City Council just passed a resolution calling for a Do Not Mail registry in the state of Washington! Check out all of the media hits.

According to the nonprofit group ForestEthics, which pushed the measure, the American junk-mail business involves turning 100 million trees into 100 billion pieces of annoying solicitation each year.

The city of Seattle is taking a symbolic stand against junk mail.

The Seattle City Council passed a resolution urging the Legislature to create a Do Not Mail junk mail registry...

Great news for the movement to take back our mailboxes: Today the Seattle City Council approved a resolution (8 to 1) calling for a Do Not Mail registry in the state of Washington!

Today the City of Seattle passed a non-binding resolution asking the State of Washington to set up a do not mail registry and directing the Seattle Public Utilities agency to evaluate the existing mail preference services as an option to provide an effective service to Seattle residents.

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.

Seattle Calls On Washington State To Give Citizens Choice Over Junk Mail

When you sort your mail and dump a fistful of catalogs, credit card offers and coupon booklets into the recycling bin, have you ever thought, "What a waste of paper?" Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin feels your pain.

"I feel like I have a right not to have garbage delivered to my door. It's like trespassing," said registry supporter Ellie Rose of Zero Waste Seattle.

Now the Seattle City Council has the chance to right a litany of wrongs when they vote on a resolution to petition the state legislature to ban junk mail. The council will vote for the resolution to create a Do-Not-Mail-Registry on January 11.

This time of year your mailbox is full of catalogs -- whether you like it or not. That could change if lawmakers in Washington pass a proposed new law. "For something that most people don't want and never asked for -- catalogs and junk mail generate enormous amounts of waste," said Will Craven of Forestethics.

Ah, December. Season of gifts, friends, family, and...catalogs. JC Penney broke the hearts of children everywhere last month when it discontinued its 1,000-page Big Book (due to increased reliance on Internet sales), but the move cut the company's catalog paper use by 30% annually. The Plano, Texas-based chain isn't the only company changing its mailbox-stuffing ways. According to ForestEthics' annual Holiday Catalog Environmental Scorecard, Timberland, Patagonia, REI, Macy's, and Crate & Barrel also deserve kudos for their "nice" efforts, while Sears and Neiman Marcus make this year's "naughty" list.

Each year, Forest Ethics rates retailers on their gift catalogs and other mailings as judged by the avoidance of paper from endangered forests, the use of Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper, use of recycled content and paper reduction.

Looking back over the years of the 'Naughty/Nice List,' it is heartening to see how companies in the direct mailing industry have improved their practices on forest destruction and paper consumption. Check out our scorecard to see the industry's leaders and laggards.

This holiday season, the catalog and direct mail industry is showing strong trends toward ‘greener’ forest and paper policies despite several laggards playing ‘grinch’ according to environmental group ForestEthics in its 4th annual ‘Naughty/Nice List’: a scorecard on the catalog & direct mail industry.

Today I stopped in and listened to the Seattle City Council meeting to hear about the proposed ‘Do Not Mail Registry‘. This registry will be modeled after the national ‘Do Not Call Registry‘. This registry would allow people to opt out of receiving unsolicited commercial mailings. After listening to some of the data surrounding the waste that these mailings create, it is obvious that we should have a Do Not Mail option available.

"I've had people tell me it's as if their house is being invaded by garbage,." said Will Craven, a spokesman for Forest Ethics, a San Francisco environmental group. "We may have a lot of hard choices ahead of us in terms of climate change and the environment. Getting rid of junk mail isn't one of them. "It's one of the easy ones."

I guess it's a sign of the times that the Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital blog has an ongoing series titled "Turning Out the Lights", chronicling various start-ups that have reached the end of their (ad)venture in capital. One of their recent eulogies was for the junk mail opt-out site ProQuo, one of several services that over the last few years has offered to help reduce your junk mail. Unlike some sites, ProQuo was willing to help you out for free. Sort of:

You think junk mail is a colossal waste of paper, right? Of course you do. Well, it's time to take a stand against the waste and annoyance of the junk mail industry.

The folks at Unjunk Mail--a division of the direct marketing company Dukky--are attempting to carve something of a middle way through the vast chasm between the American public and the Junk Mail Industry. They asked us to do a guest blog post about Do Not Mail, and I took the opportunity to discuss the difference between our goal of an enforceable Do Not Mail Registry and the gaggle of unenforceable opt-out tools that currently dot the landscape.

Never is the elusiveness of a paperless world more evident than at this time of year, when mailboxes overflow with catalogs.

Direct Mail News reports that the following remark by Postmaster General John Potter during a speech to the National Press Club was made in reference to the prospect of Do Not Mail:

Do-not-mail legislation has proponents, including the nonprofit ForestEthics, which runs the Web site DoNotMail.org. The portal urges consumers to sign a petition to stop "junk mail," citing environmental concerns.

Recently a few writers have taken aim at the notion that the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) intends for their junk mail opt-out tool, DMAChoice, to really and truly allow you to exercise control over the flow of junk mail into your home.

US junk mail requires the logging of 100 million trees each year. Junk mailers endlessly repeat that paper is recyclable, but hardly any of them use any recycled content. Deforestation accounts for 20% of global carbon emissions—more than all the world’s trains, planes, and automobiles combined. If we want to address deforestation, junk mail is an easy place to start.

Americans who sign up with the Federal Do Not Call Registry do so because they don't want to be bothered by telemarketers. And when telemarketers try to call them anyway, the Federal government steps in and enforces the law:

Here at the San Francisco ForestEthics office, we're still recovering from last week's fantastic annual event, 100 Million Trees: A Party to Stop Junk Mail, held at the W Hotel San Francisco. ForestEthics friends, supports, and grassroots activists came together to celebrate the millions of acres of forests that ForestEthics has protected to date (that's more than 65 million acres and counting!), while toasting the momentum we've built over the last 18 months on one of our flagship campaigns: Do Not Mail.

This past summer, Unjunk Mail’s research team did its best to analyze all of the services out there that help consumers stop receiving direct mail.

Since 2007, ForestEthics has teamed up with Dogwood Alliance to create the Green Grades office supply report card to inform American consumers and large purchasers of office supply products about which companies' paper practices safeguard the environment and the world's forests.

Companies active in the multi-billion dollar office supply sector got their Green Grades report cards today.

CHICAGO—Sears Holding Company (NASDAQ: SHLD) was accused today of stalling on the release of a robust paper policy...

Today, in the shadow of Seattle's Space Needle, Maggie Hussey became the 100,000th person to sign the petition calling for a national Do Not Mail Registry. Maggie signed after a member of ForestEthics' outreach team delivered their patented smooth junk mail info-rap. It's irresistible... [VIDEO]

When's the last time a personal letter turned up in your mailbox? The holidays? Your birthday? If you're like most people, you receive about 1.5 pieces of personalized mail -- including bills -- each week. And 16 pieces of junk mail.

"We want a simple, fast, effective way that any American can put there name on a list and stop receiving the junk mail that they don't want," said Francisca Rivera, a volunteer with Forest Ethics in Chicago.

On Monday we linked to a poll on Examiner.com that asked the question "Do we need a Do Not Mail Registry?" Are you curious about the results?

Take a minute to vote in this poll asking whether or not the U.S. should establish a national Do Not Mail Registry. Of course, we already know the vast majority of Americans support the creation of a registry (a 2007 Zogby poll that found a whopping 89% of Americans support the creation of a registry), but it's a fun little internets activity nonetheless.

We met Chris Hoofnagle back in March when he showed up at the San Francisco Do Not Mail resolution hearing, and proceeded to drop serious knowledge about consumer rights as it pertains to Do Not Mail, and to Do Not Call before it.

Don’t see why you should have to do all this work to stop junk mail you never asked for in the first place? Then sign ForestEthics’ Do Not Mail Petition, which is pushing lawmakers to create a national Do Not Mail list, similar to the existing Do Not Call list. So far, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors want a Do Not Mail Registry and passed a resolution calling on California to create one — but the resolution’s non-binding and has no actual power to help people make the junk mail stop.

Blog reader Joe Dee warns us: Be ready to pay $5 - $10 per stamp when business mail is outlawed. Question: who's outlawing business mail?

An anecdotal follow-up on Corinne's post about Minnesota's efforts to educate its citizens about junk mail scams... I got a call last week from a pleasant, if slightly distraught, elderly woman named Earline in Sonoma County, CA. She was concerned about a suspicious mailing she'd received from something calling itself the "Auto Warranty Division". In bold print suggesting dire urgency, the notice informed her that her auto insurance was due to expire, and that she must act quickly to extend her coverage.

The Minnesota Attorney General's office recently produced a resource guide for seniors who find themselves especially at risk from fraudulent junk mail schemes.

Some people love it, most hate it, but direct mail, commonly known as 'junk' mail, is here to stay and it may be a boon for the troubled U.S. economy.Ben Gruber reports.

ForestEthics Executive Director Todd Paglia has a piece up on the Huffington Post about the US Postal Service's massive summer sale for junk mailers who mail out more junk mail than they did last summer, and the contrasting first-class postage increase for the rest of us.

Fully 30% of all the mail in the world is US junk mail. It's been a daily annoyance for so long that many of us think of junk mail like bad weather: it's annoying, but also inevitable. Telemarketing calls at dinnertime used to annoy us too, but the Do Not Call Registry put an end to that. We can do the same for junk mail.

Today, first class postage goes up for the third consecutive year to 44 cents, and it provides a good opportunity to think about who the US Postal Service really seems to be serving. While every day citizens, like you and me, are again paying a little bit more, junk mailers, who already pay around a third of what we do to send mail that hardly anyone wants, are getting an extra 30% rebate this summer if they send out more junk mail than they did last summer.

You can control the type of mail you get in your mailbox every day.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved a non-binding resolution last week calling on the state of California and Congress to create a Do No Mail registry — the first time lawmakers in the US have voted on creating a policy to allow citizens to block receiving unsolicited mail.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a resolution calling on California to create a Do Not Mail Registry giving its citizens the choice to stop receiving unwanted junk mail. The non-binding resolution represents the first time American lawmakers have withstood pressure from the direct mail industry and the U.S. Postal Service to side with the majority of Americans.

Junk mail, that plague of unwanted and wasted advertisements and catalogs, might seem like a minor inconvenience to you and me. But according to a report issued by ForestEthics, a nonprofit environmental group that tries to protect endangered forest, found that more than 100 billion pieces of junk mail are delivered in the U.S. each year — an average of 848 pieces per household.

“Paper production can never be ‘carbon neutral,’ ” said Ginger Cassady of ForestEthics and senior campaigner for the Do Not Mail campaign to establish a registry for Americans to opt-out of junk mail. “Resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are inevitable in the production of paper, and we must support products which are truly ‘low carbon’, and not those which make suspiciously unrealistic claims of carbon neutrality.”

As anticipated, San Francisco's City Operations & Neighborhood Services Committee yesterday approved of a proposed "Do Not Mail" registry that would, in theory, spare city dwellers from the acres of junk mail that clog our post boxes yearly. And, when you look at the jaw-dropping statistics presented by the antipaper-waste organization ForestEthics, it's hard to argue otherwise.

The numbers are staggering. The average household receives over 800 pieces of junk mail per year. It's a mighty river that totals 30 percent of the world's snail mail. The brochures, letters and inserts equal 100 million trees per year, according to ForestEthics, an enviro group that's pushing for stricter federal rules.

On March 23 at 1 p.m., the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution calling for a statewide Do Not Mail registry, that would allow people to opt out of junk mail catalogues and credit card offers.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, goaded on by the environmental nonprofit ForestEthics, introduced the legislation last fall, but put it on the back burner until now (his office is hoping to get it scheduled for a hearing on March 23). The measure wouldn't actually ban junk mail in San Francisco -- it's a resolution urging the state Legislature to create a Do Not Mail registry, akin to the National Do Not Call Registry.

The easiest and cheapest solution to stopping junk mail doesn't exist yet: A national Do Not Mail registry (similar to the Do Not Call list Congress created in 2003).

''If Americans are looking for a way to reduce their carbon footprint, this is a place to start,'' ForestEthics spokesman Will Craven said. ``When we think of climate change, we think of cars. We think of polar bears. We don't think of deforestation. Deforestation accounts for nearly one-fifth of all global emissions -- more than all trains, planes and automobiles combined.''

Artist Annette Lawrence's "Free Paper" exhibit is creating quite a buzz. Currently on display at Flatbed Press in Austin, the exhibit uses junk mail collected for an entire year, broken into months, creating a powerful visual of just how much junk shows up on our doorsteps. And the Dallas Museum of Art just bought the December stack!

(Watch the local news coverage after the jump.)

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- If the nonprofit group ForestEthics had its way some, of North America's top direct marketers -- including Sears, Capital One and American Express -- would get just as many lumps of coal in their mailboxes this holiday season as direct-mail pieces they bombard consumers with throughout the year.

To the folks on his route through the cul-de-sacs of Apex, N.C., Steve Padgett wasn't just a great mailman but a decent guy who once sent a pink teddy bear to an ailing neighborhood kid.

RALEIGH - After former mailman Steven Padgett received probation in federal court Wednesday for holding onto years worth of junk mail, support for him swiftly spread beyond his family, friends and residents of his Apex route.

From the napkins around paper coffee cups to our morning newspaper, the junk mail and the bedtime book, paper is everywhere. We use more and more of it, and its impact on the environment is huge.

Last week I reported on comments made my Pitney Bowes executive chairman, Mike Critelli, in a recent NY Times interview. Mr. Critelli believes the environmental impact of unsolicited mail is greatly exaggerated by well-funded, but misinformed activist groups. To provide an opposing viewpoint, I asked Will Craven, the Media Officer and spokeperson for ForestEthics' Do Not Mail campaign to respond to Critelli’s comments.

Do you still get tons of unwanted junk mail in your mailbox every day? I know I do. I recently spoke with Junk Mail expert and environmental activist Linda Wells of Forest Ethics to find out how to deal with this annoying, destructive, and wasteful marketing tactic, and why it still happens.

Do you ever cringe because you open your mailbox and it's stuffed with junk mail?

As ForestEthics showed, action causes reaction.

Artists have always made statements on environmental issues, and these days more and more are practising what they preach. In abandoned lots and derelict public parks, guerrilla gardeners plant flowers, trees and vegetables.

Listen to Paul Harvey Jr.'s report on how ForestEthics reveals an even bigger reason to hate junk mail.

Having spent my entire career in the retail and catalog marketing industry, I wanted to ask Will Craven of ForestEthics a few questions about the Do Not Mail campaign from a catalog marketing perspective. What follows is an unedited transcript of the interview.

Will Craven from Forest Ethics on what junk mail has to do with global warming.

Everyone knows junk mail junks up your mail box, but the nonprofit ForestEthics has recently come out with a report on exactly how it is junking up the planet.

Do you get tired of all the coupons, catalogues, and credit card offers in your mail everyday?

Here's another reason to hate junk mail: It has a bigger carbon footprint than 11 coal-fired power plants, seven U.S. states or the emissions generated by heating nearly 13 million homes for the winter.

Meanwhile, an environmental nonprofit organization, ForestEthics, published a report yesterday detailing the detrimental environmental impact of junk mail and a petition signed by about 60,000 people who support a "do not mail" registry.

Annabelle Gurwitch on a new effort to curb paper junk mail

Annabelle Gurwitch, spokesperson for the “Do Not Mail Registry” and host of Planet Green’s WA$TED, and Jerry Cerasale, Senior Vice President of government affairs at the Direct Marketing Association, debate the virtues of junk mail.

Unlike our President, I did open the e-mail. I also saw the movies about climate change, watched the television specials, and I read the books.

Toilet paper and similar products are hardly our only paper woes. Another insidious paper use — and one that’s annoying instead of useful to boot — is junk mail.

The vast majority of American people disagree with the editorial, “No need for laws on junk mail” published on March 30th, 2008. A recent Zogby International poll concluded that 89% of people would support a tool similar to the Do Not Call registry to make it easy to opt out of unsolicited junk mail.

Sure they fight the rain and snow and dark of night — but if all the mail carrier delivers is junk mail, some people are saying don’t bother.

Instead of stepping forward with ideas on how to help solve the identity crisis issue—which is due in part to the junk mail industry’s handling of names and personal data—the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and the businesses it regulates are wailing over the fact that states, fifteen of them, have started to enact their own laws.

Postal carriers' mailbags might be getting a little lighter, thanks to a group of environmentally aware students. Teacher Jim Duxbury and the Orrville High School earth science club directed an innovative campaign to target unwanted mail-order catalogs.

Murray Martin wonders: "Is this a real issue or is this an emotional discussion?"